All I want for Christmas is the return of yoghurt pot lids. And not just for me, for everyone. In this season of goodwill, I want everyone to get a share of the joy. The lids disappeared very suddenly, without so much as a goodbye. It didn’t seem right. And it wasn’t just yoghurt pots, either. Creams, buttermilk, cottage cheese, you name it, were suddenly minus their lids, hatless, naked.
For me, this was a blow. I’ve always taken my plastic pot management very seriously. I have strict rules. Not for me pulling back the foil cover, leaving it attached to the tub, and then replacing the lid on top of it. No, not neat. The foil would be removed completely, possibly licked, and discarded.
I once had a complaint from my mum, as the best-before date was on the foil and so lost. I took this point, which was fair enough, got a marker pen and wrote the best-before date on the plastic lid. Job done. The integrity of the pot and lid was duly respected. Barking mad, I know, but when you’re as messy and disordered as me, the precious few little things in your life that are in good order assume great significance. The rest of the kitchen, indeed the rest of the fridge, might have been in disarray, but at least the husbandry of my plastic, be-lidded, de-foiled pots was beyond reproach. This small, neat, daily win meant so much.
Then suddenly, it was taken away from me. At first, I assumed I’d picked a rogue, lidless pot from the shelf, but it soon became apparent that things were more serious. They were all gone. Well, all gone from the round pots anyway, other shaped pots – squares, ovals etc – seemed to have lobbied successfully for exemptions. So it is that the lidless 500g pot of cottage cheese in my fridge glowers down at the tub of Philadelphia cream cheese, smug in its covering. Unfair.
I get the need to reduce plastic, but I don’t get why it’s just the lid that’s paid the price. I take it that the lids were harder to make recyclable than the pots. But if you’re going to ditch the plastic, then do away with the whole pot and find another way. I, for one, would be more than happy to dip into my world-class collection of Tupperware and glass jars, and take a vessel to the supermarket to be filled. A cheery operative done up like a farmhand could stand behind a bar equipped with a range of pub-like pumps, from which to dispense a range of dairy products.
To be fair, efforts have been made to fill this yawning lid-free gap in my life. Yeo Valley cited an online survey that showed “overwhelming support for us to remove clip lids from the pots”. Hmm, I need a look at that survey. I was never consulted. They said the move would remove 145 tonnes of plastic a year, weirdly expressed as the “equivalent” of “188 Friesian cows, 24 African elephants or 17 tractors”. Eh? Initially, if you collected some tokens they’d send you a reusable lid. Fair play. But then stocks ran out and that was that. You can also buy silicone lids elsewhere, but I can never get them to clip on properly.
So, I remain in a sulk. I’m reduced to crimping the foil lid back on to the pot, which obviously means no more licking of the foil as that would be unhygienic. But the dried-up bits of stuff stuck to the underside of the foil can’t be very hygienic either. And I’m so diligent with my crimping that the pot looks unopened, leading to the contents getting spilled. All in all, in my case at least, more product goes off and is wasted. The world’s gone mad, I tell you.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
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