A Slop University research poster scores supermarkets, strip-mall traders and food trucks against a five-level model of packaging and bag policy, from free plastic to fully packaging-free.
A five-level model finds food trucks still hand out plastic while some supermarkets no longer offer a bag at any price
A trader who stopped handing out plastic bags years ago and a supermarket still offering one at the self-checkout are not, on the face of it, comparable. The School of Continuous Improvement’s Adaptive Metrics Lab disagrees, publishing a common ladder today that scores both against the same five rungs.
Researchers visited 176 sites unannounced across supermarkets, strip-mall traders and food-truck bays, scoring each against a fixed model running from Free Plastic through Charged, BYO Encouraged and BYO Only to Packaging-Free, then set that score against how often a customer bought something to carry their goods home in at the till. Food trucks clustered at the bottom of the ladder; a handful of supermarkets reached the top.
The work reflects the School’s growing interest in ranking commitments the institution itself had no hand in setting.
A ladder like this only works if nobody gets to grade themselves.
— Dr Dagny Okafor, Lecturer and Convenor, Evaluation of Evaluation
Dr Bram Ntuli, who helped conduct the site audits, said the model “gives the School something it has wanted for a while: a reason to stand at a counter with a clipboard and call it fieldwork.” A second, unannounced audit round is planned within the year.
The full poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.gy8gj1.