This question became particularly relevant for Dinna Sigaard Bruun Hansen when she participated in an experiment with the aim of going zero-waste. The now 33-year old consultant from Aarhus, Denmark, agreed to avoid packaging entirely for about 10 days after being approached by the Danish Broadcasting Corporation. "It was actually very demanding," she explains. "It was time- consuming, and I had to shop in so many different places rather than just going to one store. I also realised that I ended up buying products that I would not have chosen otherwise, based on both personal beliefs as well as from a sustainability standpoint," she says. Dinna's experiment might have been about avoiding packaging in general, but more often than not, packaging means plastic.

Many consumers, worldwide, have in recent years become aware of the growing amount of plastic making its way into our ecosystems. Products such as bamboo toothbrushes and reusable water bottles have been recommended to those trying to reduce their plastic consumption - much like Dinna during her experiment. Meanwhile different organizations are fighting the use of disposable plastics worldwide, and several countries have already banned the use of plastic bags. Another recent culprit that has seen harsh crack-downs is the disposable plastic straw, which has received criticism from shoppers and diners alike. And now, some supermarkets such as Morrisons in the UK as well as Danish supermarket conglomerate Coop are reacting with more eco-friendly packaging initiatives. Yet, the production of plastic is steadily increasing.

For Dinna, the experiment meant that she became aware of just how difficult plastic is to avoid. "I often end up buying plastic packaging because I mostly buy organic fruits and vegetables. Those are very often packed in plastic," she points out three years after the experiment. "Toilet paper is always wrapped in plastic, and I couldn't avoid that either," she also notes.

The versatility of plastics means that the material plays an important role in many different sectors, including packaging, building and construction, electronics, agriculture, and healthcare. From the packaging on our food to the frames on our windows and the shampoo bottles in our showers - plastics are everywhere. Especially on the shelves of our supermarkets, as Dinna's experience so clearly illustrates.

According to the association of plastics manufacturers PlasticsEurope, a total of 335 million tonnes of plastics were produced worldwide in 2016. The plastics industry is also one of the fastest growing industries, according to UN Environment. Their website states that the rate of plastic production has grown faster since the 1950s than that of any other material, with only 9% of produced plastics being recycled today. At the same time, there has been a shift from durable plastics to those meant for single use. In fact, according to PlasticsEurope, 39.9% of plastics produced in the EU, including Switzerland and Norway, were being used for packaging in 2018. This begs the question, how can plastic still be produced in such quantities despite this new trend of anti-plastic living?

The increasing production of plastic worldwide is often explained by the convenience of plastics both for the consumer and the producer. Disposable plastics are heavily consumed because they, simply put, make life easier. For a long time, the availability of these products has given consumers little incentive to care about the impact of plastic on the environment or to think about alternatives. We as consumers have also grown accustomed to accessing products from all over the world, sold fresh in our local supermarkets. But keeping these products fresh from producer to shopping cart often requires plastic packaging. Another common explanation for the booming plastic industry is the fact that there is little reason for profit-driven plastic producers to change the status quo. The consumers are hooked on plastics, and finding an alternative that is as cheap and practical is not particularly appealing or easy for that matter.

The current explanations of why the production of plastic continues to increase worldwide are all relevant for understanding this paradox. However, what seems to have been left out is the impact that conflicting narratives about "eco-friendly" shopping has on the individual, and how these narratives make us consume plastics despite our environmental awareness.

When Dinna shops now, she aims to put as little strain on the environment as possible. This is why she got involved with the zero waste experiment in the first place. "I was a volunteer in UngEnergi [a sustainability-focused youth organization] and helped get it started. I also did a project for them where we visited different upper secondary schools to offer advice on sustainability to the students," she explains. Also when shopping, Dinna has overall sustainability in mind: "I do think about how much plastic and packaging I buy, but I don't necessarily shop packaging-free. I have a more holistic perspective," she emphasises.

When asked about what is important to her when considering a product, Dinna tries to take into account a variety of factors: "I think about what it is I want to achieve by being sustainable, and that I have to reflect that in the products I choose", she explains. "The reason I prefer to buy organic produce, even though others would disagree, is because it does not involve spreading pesticides in areas where people work and live, so I think there are a number of things to consider. Then I take into account which countries the products are grown in, and then I think about the packaging of the product".

Whether we, as Dinna, take a holistic approach to our sustainable purchasing, or are more focused on a specific issue such as plastics, consumers create a sense of identity through their products. Different sustainable lifestyles appeal to different types of consumers, and give them the opportunity to reinforce that identity - whether it is for political, moral or environmental purposes. Having various products and their narratives appeal to different types of consumers is not just limited to plastic - or the lack of it.

Paige West, Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College and Columbia University, has also written about this idea in her ethnography, where she follows coffee from producers in Papua New Guinea to consumers around the world. She describes how the coffee industry uses images of a Papua New Guinea as simultaneously poor and exotic to market their product, and how consumers buy into this idea, even though the image they buy is inaccurate. The images that are used to sell specialty coffee in particular, are manipulated to make consumers feel that they contribute to improving the lives of people halfway across the world through the simple act of buying. As with other products, the market for specialty coffee appeals to different consumer identities at the same time. Individuals can choose to buy into "social responsibility, political action, exotic locality, environmental sustainability, and social status," in West's words. They buy an added value, a purpose, an identity even.

The identities we create through our shopping can change, though. Trying to avoid plastic does not mean that we are forced to never buy a plastic-wrapped tomato or a disposable bottle ever again. Our consumer identities are fluid and can change depending on situation and product. This can even be the case for sustainable consumers like Dinna: "I sometimes have to compromise on my ambitions of being sustainable. I have a busy life like everyone else, and sometimes, you find yourself standing in the supermarket, and then you just have to make a choice based on what is available." Although Dinna always aims to take working conditions as well as CO2 emissions into consideration, she also reveals with a laugh: "But that doesn't mean I never buy a pineapple."

An industry that is particularly good at capitalizing on these fluid consumer identities is the plastic bottle industry. The consumption of bottled water has increased exponentially over the past 30 years. According to Statista, the global sale went up from 212 to 391 billion liters between 2007 and 2017 alone. Bottled water is often sold as pristine and pure, giving you the impression that you are choosing a healthy option. At the same time, plastics producers convince us that plastic is non-threatening to the environment - as long as we recycle. According to Dr. Jennifer Clapp from the University of Waterloo, Canada, the plastics industry has actively resisted regulations on plastic by shifting the responsibility for waste management from producers to consumers. In other words, it is up to the individual to recycle and keep the environment safe.

Mathias Hvam, CSR Manager from Danish supermarket conglomerate Coop, also thinks that recyclability rather than a reduction of plastic use per se is the most sustainable option - not just when talking about bottles. "A lot of plastic use has to do with food safety, and in some cases cardboard and paper just aren't able to live up to the standards set forth by Danish law. Proper practice therefore isn't to unwrap everything but to ensure that the materials we use for packaging can be recycled. And that is possible with plastics as well as cardboard and paper. We just have to be conscious of this when designing our packaging," he says.

All in all, whether you're pursuing a healthy identity, a sustainable identity or both, you may end up buying the disposable bottle (or other packaging) because it promises it all. But here's the flipside: By funding campaigns that educate the public on recycling and reusing plastic, producers suggest that there is no need for regulations on production. So, while we are given the impression that we are supporting green initiatives by recycling, the latter actually allows the plastic industry to legitimise its increasing production, according to Dr. Clapp.

Think about the supermarket and the selection of tomatoes again. What is it you care most about? Would you rather buy an organic beefsteak tomato that is produced locally in a greenhouse or conventional cherry tomatoes that have been grown naturally in a another country? The various reflections that we go through as consumers mirror the wide array of eco-friendly narratives that influence our decisions. Often, as Dinna points out, this means that we can't be both organic and plastic-free at the same time. And what makes this decision so hard in the first place?

Shoppers are constantly exposed to a myriad of different and even conflicting narratives about plastics and environmentally friendly practices. Firstly, there is the anti-plastic trend that Dinna briefly tried. At the same time, we have supermarkets telling us that plastic packaging is a necessity for food conservation, and that by simply recycling that plastic, we can minimise our impact on the environment, much like Mathias Hvam from Coop states. In addition, consumers are faced with many other 'green' narratives, such as the one about food waste, which has made practices like dumpster diving, saving leftovers and storing food properly much more widespread than they were just a decade ago. And then there is of course the never-ending problem of reducing our CO2 footprint as well as just simply eating fresh and healthy. Feeling overwhelmed yet? While these green ideas are all laudable, it is often impossible to follow all of them at the same time. For many consumers, this means having to compromise and prioritize what is most important to them. Whether it is cost, taste, quality or one of the numerous environmental issues, consumers are often forced to weigh up their priorities, and more often than not, plastic is simply hard to escape.

Dinna had the same experience during her experiment in 2016. When only focusing on plastics, she was forced to give up on some of the other concerns that make up her consumer identity. "To me, sustainability is more than just avoiding one thing. I feel like, if you choose just one of all of these sustainable concerns, you will get an eye-opener, because you realize what things you are willing to compromise on. If you choose just one concern to live up to all the time, you lose the ability to live up to others. I didn't feel like I could live sustainably this way. Sustainability isn't just about looking at the amount of plastics in the world" she explains, and gives an example of a case where it is difficult to see which option is the most eco-friendly: "Tomatoes that are grown in Spain are more eco-friendly than tomatoes that are produced in Denmark. You might choose the Danish tomato because you like that it is locally produced, but if you include the CO2 emissions of the transport from Spain, the Spanish tomato will actually have a lower carbon footprint because it is grown in a natural environment rather than in a greenhouse."

But how do we actually navigate these different green narratives? And why might we be more likely to buy plastics rather than avoiding them? According to an American study, consumers make their decisions because their different concerns are placed in a hierarchy. In an FDA report from 1999 under the title "What People Know and Do Not Know About Nutrition", three scholars analyzed how knowledge about nutrition affected Americans' eating habits. Although the study found an increase in knowledge about many nutrition and health related topics, consumers still did not name nutrition as their most important concern when making dietary choices. Instead, concerns about taste and cost were also important priorities. In other words, unless consumers also started seeing healthy foods as tasty and affordable, they were less likely to choose a nutritious meal, regardless of their knowledge of the health risks linked to unhealthy diets.

The same rule applies to plastics. In Britain, a nationwide survey of 2,000 adults conducted by software company ThoughtWorks asked consumers to consider which issues would determine how they buy food by the year 2030. The survey suggests that UK consumers imagine recycling, food waste, scarcity of supplies and ethics to be increasingly important for their decision- making, with recyclability and reduced packaging taking the lead. However, it is not yet the top concern, according to a 2018 study done by the independent charity Keep Britain Tidy. While just under every second respondent in the survey of 2,138 adults stated that they were willing to put in extra time and effort to find alternatives to disposable bottles, there were still many factors that made them choose plastic. Concerns such as the cleanliness of tap water and convenience of disposable bottles when traveling as well as design and impracticality of reusable bottles make consumers more likely to buy bottled water than bring a reusable one.

In Denmark, plastic is becoming an increasingly important issue for consumers. But according to Mathias Hvam from Coop, plastics are not the only issue on their customers' minds: "When we measure our customers' interests, plastic packaging is placed in the top three in regard to what consumers want supermarkets to work on," he says.

Dinna also finds herself having to prioritize. For her, this often means putting plastics below other interests: "I often do this when I buy organic fruit and vegetables. Those are often wrapped in plastic. And a lot of the time, smaller portions are also packaged, which results in even more plastics. But if you know you can't eat larger portions, then you are just contributing to food waste. So there are a lot of concerns I have to consider," she explains.

Everyday life also plays a part in how and what we purchase. Already in 1985, scholars in the US found that consumers and their behaviour are affected by certain socioeconomic characteristics. In a survey of 365 people, Mark E. Slama from Utah State University and Armen Tashchian from Kennesaw State University discovered a link between shopping habits and factors such as income, family status and education. The study showed that people with moderate incomes were more cautious of their purchasing and would pay attention to good deals. The same was the case for families with children as well as people with a longer education. Put more simply, the scholars showed that factors such as income, unsurprisingly, are important when determining whether to buy the cheaper, plastic-wrapped tomato or the loosely sold farmers market tomato. So, the decision on which product to purchase is not just a matter of personal beliefs, but is also influenced by what is economically realistic, based on our household situation.

In conclusion, we may want to be plastic-free, organic, CO2-minimizing and food waste-conscious all at once, but our everyday life, socioeconomic status and numerous concerns simply do not always allow us to do so. As a result, we prioritize our concerns to satisfy our many different needs depending on the situation. And like Dinna, that might mean buying plastic regardless of our intentions to do otherwise.

So does this mean that we have no choice but to choose plastics over other concerns or vice versa? Frédéric Hamburger, founder and owner of LØS Market, a packaging free and 100% organic store in Copenhagen, Denmark, doesn't think so. He believes that making sustainable shopping convenient is
the way to go. Yet, for the average consumer in a regular supermarket, it is difficult to avoid both packaging and food waste while also being organic, as Dinna's experience has shown. And the founder of LØS agrees. That is why his store combines several 'green' concepts at once: "You will get products without packaging, especially fruits and vegetables, which are all 100% organic and you can bring your own container, and then it's all super easy. It's very convenient", Hamburger says. "I think that is what people like about coming here; it is the combination of the products being organic and not being packaged. You don't have to compromise on anything."

But he also points out that supermarkets encourage our current consumer culture and continued use of plastics: "We are encouraged to buy as much as possible and to store what we buy for as long as possible. I want to do it the other way around. I'd rather shop for fresh produce once every day or every two days than only once a week and have a cucumber lying in my fridge that can last for a whole week because it is wrapped in plastic. That makes absolutely no sense to me."

Neither EU nor US law completely prohibit the use of plastics in products made available to us on supermarket shelves. EU regulations, showing concern for both the consumer and the environment, have set a number of requirements that packing materials must live up to. Such limitations are formulated out of the concern for, among other things, the possibility of migration - the transfer of particles from the packaging to the food - as well as the effect the packaging can have on taste and odor, according to the European Commission's website. However, a quick visit to your local grocery store will most likely look like Dinna's. Despite legislation, plastic still finds its way into our shops and homes. Likewise, a glimpse at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Inventory of Effective Food Contact Substance Notifications shows that, also in the US, plastics such as polyethylene, a thermoplastic polymer, are deemed safe for contact with foods. This means that certain plastics are allowed in the manufacturing, packaging, transporting and holding of foods.

Due to legislation set forth by the Danish Ministry of Environment and Food, some supermarkets even choose to use plastics where it may actually be unnecessary, according to Mathias Hvam from Coop. "There are some considerations in Danish law that state that organic produce must be clearly distinct from conventional produce. In practice, this means having to wrap one or the other, when you have for example both organic and conventional apples side-by-side. Because we still have a smaller selection of organics, we choose to wrap these products so we can keep the use of wrapping materials to a minimum. So this is definitely a hindrance to going completely wrapping- free on products that wouldn't otherwise require it in order to prolong freshness," says Hvam.

This creates an extra challenge for the eco-conscious consumer when they are forced to choose between non-plastics or organics, as also argued by Frédéric Hamburger. And this situation doesn't look like it's going to see any drastic changes any time soon. When asked whether Coop has an influence on the plastic debate in Denmark, the answer was hesitant: "We of course have some influence since we are a large player on the market. But there are a lot of different actors that influence the debate. We try to voice our opinions but I can't say for sure how large our impact is. We try to bring a nuanced and factual perspective to the debate. We have a premise that we won't try to solve a problem without fully understanding it first," he says.

The plastic industry's lobby also influences the political debate about plastic and ultimately determines whether plastics continue to be widely available to the consumer. According to an article in the Green European Journal, an independent publication of the Green European Foundation, a leak of the European Commission's draft Plastics Strategy in October 2017 revealed that a blank space had been left for possible voluntary commitments by PlasticsEurope. However, by the time the final strategy was published in early 2018, there were still no industrial commitments included. Eventually, when the amended proposal was adopted in October 2018, the language used was still vague and only "encouraged" the industry to commit, rather than stating actual limitations. Ultimately, this allows producers to circumvent regulations on single-use plastic, for example.

In addition, while the EU has put a ban on single-use plastic products where alternatives exist, the regulation generally puts more focus on how "plastic products are designed, used, produced and recycled in the EU", according to the EU's website. In other words, the regulation is more about managing plastic than about slowing down its production. Another example of this is the European Commission's debate on whether to invest in infrastructure that can turn plastic into fuel. The idea is to find a solution for waste that is "not reusable and not mechanically recyclable". Yet, according to an article in Politico, green groups have criticised the initiative and point to a contradiction between the Commission's target to cut the use of throwaway plastic and to set high recycling targets. Such technology could potentially be used to justify the continued production of plastic, although plastic-derived fuel is not necessarily better for the environment.

As the reader has probably gathered by now, the issue of rising plastic production is not a simple one to solve. Especially for the individual consumer, whose influence in many ways is limited to what's available on the supermarket shelf. However "green" we may consider ourselves or wish to be, most also come to the same conclusion as Dinna. Plastics are hard to avoid. A lack of options means that we have to choose, whether we like it or not, and if other things are more important to us, we will continue to purchase plastics and support that industry. And if we are also convinced that plastics aren't that bad as long as we recycle, then plastics are likely to be prioritized even lower. The real question is, how do we put power back in the hands of the consumer and help them make decisions that allow them to live up to whatever identity they want?

Ideally, stores such as Frédéric Hamburger's could make it much easier for the individual to avoid plastics while still being conscious of other concerns. However, we won't see this in our conventional supermarkets in the near future, according to Mathias Hvam from Coop. "It's not like we chose at some point in time that our food looks so much cooler, wrapped in plastic. The decision was made because it has a positive effect on shelf-life and protects the food, in order to minimize waste. If you look at it from an environmental perspective, it doesn't make sense to avoid packaging," he states.

A more realistic solution might be to better inform shoppers. From Dinna's perspective, it would be helpful for consumers if they had more information about the individual product's sustainability: "I wish there was a label to guide the consumer. I realise that it would be difficult to do, as products are transported to so many different places. It might be an option to print general labels where you can see the CO2 footprint and how the working conditions have been for the producers, as well as what the mode of transport has been. Such labels could also show you what material has been used to pack the product."

Clearly, convenience is key, but a lot of things stand in the way of a major plastics revolution. Larger changes have to start at the top, with legislation putting actual pressure on what can and cannot be made available in supermarkets. On the other hand, what may also need to change is the idea that we can return to an entirely plastic-free existence. As both Hamburger and Hvam have pointed out, our consumer culture has simply changed too much since plastic production began to intensify in the 50s. Dinna came to the same conclusion after her experiment, saying that completely avoiding plastics simply isn't a realistic approach: "I couldn't think of a place to buy dairy products without packaging - unless I had gone to a farm to milk a cow."