While packaging-free stores are in the uptake, single-use packaging remains a constitutive element in self-service supermarkets. Portraying packaging as an actor in workplace practices, the article provides novel explanations for the supermarkets’ struggle to reduce packaging. The ethnographic analysis shows that food packaging is crucial for the functioning of supermarkets. This is in contrast to engineering or marketing perspectives on packaging functions that often don’t take practical demands and habitual peculiarities of everyday work practices into consideration. Framed as a code of practice, packaging guides the daily management of food in three crucial ways. First, packaging is a multifunctional medium to present products to customers. Second, packaging is an indicator and transmitter to assess product quantities and qualities in the internal logistics of supermarkets. Third, packaging enables the management and reproduction of representative supermarket qualities like freshness and fullness. As a consequence, and in order to be successful, strategies for the reduction of packaging waste have to better acknowledge the diversity of roles packaging is playing within the framework of workplace practices. Planners of innovation processes need to consider the expertise of workers, the agency of packaging, the situational distribution of action, and the cultural framings of supermarkets.

尽管无包装商店正在兴起，但一次性包装仍然是自助超市中的构成要素。文章将包装描述为工作场所实践的参与者，为超市减少包装的努力提供了新颖的解释。人种学分析表明，食品包装对于超市的运作至关重要。这与包装功能的工程学或市场营销观点相反，后者通常没有考虑实际需求和日常工作习惯的习惯。包装是一种行为准则，通过三种关键方式指导食品的日常管理。首先，包装是向客户展示产品的多功能媒介。第二，包装是评估超市内部物流中产品数量和质量的指示器和变送器。第三，包装可以管理和再现具有代表性的超市品质，例如新鲜度和饱满度。因此，为了取得成功，减少包装浪费的策略必须更好地认识到包装在工作场所实践框架内所扮演的角色的多样性。创新过程的计划者需要考虑工人的专业知识，包装的代理，行动的情势分配以及超市的文化框架。减少包装浪费的策略必须更好地认识到包装在工作场所实践框架内所扮演的角色的多样性。创新过程的计划者需要考虑工人的专业知识，包装的代理，行动的情势分配以及超市的文化框架。减少包装浪费的策略必须更好地认识到包装在工作场所实践框架内所扮演的角色的多样性。创新过程的计划者需要考虑工人的专业知识，包装的代理，行动的情势分配以及超市的文化框架。