Last Thursday, I did the weekly household shopping. Well, being a modern man, I actually used to do it quite a lot, until the theory of comparative advantage took hold in our house. So, like most men, I ended up with pleasant tasks relating to drains, flat tyres, punctures, burst pipes, broken and ever breaking appliances, grass, wiring, bikes and, naturally, killing mice, the vestigial ritual of the hunter-gatherer.

Shopping could be a relief, I suppose. Retailing is a high art, worth observing from time to time.

Quinnsworth's metamorphosis into Tesco is nearing completion at Nutgrove in south Dublin. That's how it seemed to me. The layout is redesigned, the look and feel is different and the goods stocked are not quite as they used to be. But the thing that struck me most of all was how much packaging I ended up with last Thursday night.

I cannot establish whether there is now more packaging in products stocked at Tesco than there was in Quinnsworth. I suspect that packaging is on the increase everywhere. It is amazingly invidious, and used ingeniously.

I was the sucker male desperately seeking convenience, accompanied by two children at the end of their batteries for the day. So I was a bad environmentalist - I bought fruit, vegetables, meat and potatoes all wrapped in plastic. Wouldn't they go well in the freezer? Isn't the couple of pence worth it when you want to avoid queuing for the weighing machine, where you use a plastic bag anyway? So what if one of the peaches at the bottom of the neat package was rotten - don't things go to waste anyway in the house? Wouldn't they all stack better and not fall on the kitchen floor getting bruised and therefore utterly unfit for human consumption?

Isn't it nice to have an assistant to bag things, to wrap plastic bottles in plastic bags, with the plastic bleach bottle safely double-wrapped in those most recyclable plastic bags? And of course, I'll come shopping next week armed with 30 crumpled bags, which I have resisted using to line my plastic waste bin.

Food packaging has its admirable side. Think how much of the value-added of Muller Fruit Corner or Crunch Corner yoghurts is represented by the shape of the plastic container. Thought went into it. One has to admire the person or people who made a container which mimicked what people (me, at least) used to do in mixing plain yoghurt and jam at the kitchen table. Why didn't I think of packaging it? Perhaps when we notice quirks of our own behaviour we should immediately think of mass-marketing ideas.

But packaging, as quickly disposed-of waste, is distressing. As with daffodils, we could weep to see it haste away so soon, but we'd better weep to see it not waste away soon enough. We have a landfill crisis in this State and the Government has a target of diverting 20 per cent of household waste away to recycling by the end of next year. Brendan Howlin, the previous Minister for the Environment introduced Waste Management (Packaging) Regulations in 1997. In a novel scheme, IBEC set up a not-for-profit company called Repak to facilitate voluntary, combined recycling by companies which each place more than 25,000 tonnes of packaging on the market each year. Companies which participate in Repak are not subject to the regulations and avoid having to operate waste take-back schemes.

Among other things, Repak has helped fund my green, plastic Kerbside Dublin box for recyclable packaging material. After last Thursday's splurge, the box was full by the weekend. Repak claims that it has helped recycle 21,000 tonnes of waste through Kerbside and Rehab - its target is 120,000 tonnes per annum - with another 30,000 recycled directly by member companies. This compares with a total of more than 400,000 tonnes of municipal packaging waste.

Some hope may come from the consultancy study on the use of plastic bags initiated by the Minister for the Environment in August. The consultants are to find ways to reduce the estimated 500 million plastic bags used in our green land each year. Noel Dempsey could become the Minister who altered shopping forever.

In consumerist times, what better accolade? Go for it, Minister - and never mind those nasty people who'll joke about brown paper bags in politics.

Oliver O'Connor is an investment funds specialist