I really see this as a problem further up the chain - why is wasteful packaging even on the shelves? Why is there so much crap to throw out? Why was it legal to wrap a product in another 25% of its weight in useless, non-recyclable packaging? I'm not sure why I as an individual am forced to bear the brunt of colossally wasteful pipelines and processes that I had no say in. I can do a bit and reuse bags, buy stuff with minimal packaging (or avoid buying new stuff etc.), but broadly, I have no choice most of the time.

I've started to give bad reviews to products with wasteful packaging that I couldn't see before purchase. If there's multiple cubic feet of styrofoam, I will leave a bad review mentioning only the packaging complaint so that future purchasers will know too.

> why is wasteful packaging even on the shelves?

Shrinkage. It's to the point where you need a screwdriver to get a kid's toy car out of the box.

100% agreed, this is exactly the problem. Just take a pack of yoghurt, we had good paper packaging and now they've glued a useless plastic port to it. Boom, no longer recyclable. Same with cheese and other bread toppings, all used to be packaged in perfectly recyclable paper and now it's sold in see-through plastic.

See through plastic can be both recycleable and biodegradable and might even use less ressources to produce, and improve the shelf life so that less food is wasted. Details are very important in these matters, which is why it's a bad idea to put the burden of figuring this all out on consumers.

Food-soiled paper was never recyclable.

Maybe OP had meant compostable?

Probably shouldn't compost dairy, unless it's industrially composted with chemical treatment