The latest plan to save plastic is the most bonkers yet

Tesco claims removing lids from hummus tubs will save tonnes of plastic waste, but how much waste will alternative coverings add?

Who would have thought that a tub of beige paste could inspire such fervent emotions? Back in the summer, a YouGov poll of 6,355 adults found hummus the nation’s favourite dip, beating those arguably more interesting confections, taramasalata and guacamole, by an impressive margin.
Perhaps it is our fondness for brownish nursery food of unchallenging texture – shepherd’s pie; rice pudding – that accounts for our fondness for hummus.
That and our noble culinary tradition of boiling veg to a pulp.
Introducing readers to the then-unfamiliar chickpea in her Book of Middle Eastern Food, first published in 1968, Claudia Roden noted reassuringly that: “It is virtually impossible to spoil chickpeas through over-cooking.”
An unexpected aspect of hummus’s universal popularity is the remarkable number of university societies devoted to the humble comestible: York, Durham, SOAS, Trinity Hall, Cambridge and Manchester all have social media pages devoted to pulverised chickpeas.
Manchester’s hummus society is particularly keen on the environmental aspects, reminding its members that “reducing reliance on mass produced … food from supermarkets … decreases individual plastic and food waste”.
This is a message that Sainsbury’s and Tesco have embraced, to the dismay of their customers. I recently bought tubs of hummus and taramasalata and was bemused to find that while the tarama had its usual plastic lid, the hummus was covered only with a flimsy plastic film.
Assuming that the missing lid was an anomaly, I wrapped the tub in cling film and thought no more of it, until reading a couple of days later that the absence was a statement of eco-virtue.
Tesco claims that removing the lids will save some 157 tonnes of plastic waste per year, but there seem to be no figures explaining how much the (non-recyclable) film – not to mention the additional plastic food wrap – will add to the total.
Various more or less retro alternatives have been proposed. Lids for hummus tubs are available online – at a price. The charity Wrap suggests covering tubs with “a small plate” – a nostalgic echo of my grandmother’s pantry, thronged with plate-covered remnants. But there comes a point when the faff of preserving one’s lidless tub of hummus suggests a less troublesome alternative. In the recipe for homemade hummus in their book Falastin, Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley argue that: “For anyone who’s grown up on [supermarket] tubs of hummus … eating it while still warm … will be a revelation.”
Still more resonant is Claudia Rosen’s description of the young Lebanese student who, “nearly fainting with longing and hunger”, urged her to include his favourite recipe in her book: chickpeas pureed with garlic and oil, garnished with paprika. Food for thought, now as then.
On Friday, I went to a concert at the Royal Festival Hall. Sitting in front of me were a mother and her young son. It was a fairly chewy programme: Igor Levitt playing Bach, Brahms and Liszt’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony.
The little boy was fidgety, and he was not the only one. Nearby a grown-up was doing that would-be conductor thing, all twitching fingers and flung-back head. By comparison, the child’s silent engagement with music a little beyond his comfort zone was wholly admirable.
The following day I went to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the Royal Ballet & Opera. This time the audience was full of endearingly tutu-clad mini-ballerinas. They all sat quiet as mice – with the exception of the child behind us, who kept up a penetrating soprano commentary throughout the performance. Beyond the occasional ineffectual “shush”, his mother did nothing to discourage him.
Decades ago, I used to take my young son to events from art galleries to evensong, enduring the fish-eyed glares of oldies who made clear their view children should not be heard – and preferably not seen. With a combination of bribery and menace he defied them every time.
I am strongly in favour of introducing children to the arts, early and often. And I resist metamorphosing into one of those fish-eyed oldies. But there is a balance to be struck, and it is this: introducing your children to the arts is a wonderful thing. Inflicting your children on the arts – not so much.