Speak to a supermarket owner/manager. You would not believe how much packaging exists for a simple apple or similar. You would see an unpackaged apple at the end of the process and be none the less aware about the plastics involved.
Make sellers take back waste as a condition to sell. Boom. Problem solved.
You've changed the incentive, but doubled the potential number of material transports needed to move packaging back to the source.
In the interim period, while businesses figure out how to deal with less packaging, you end up with all the current stuff going back and forth all over the country, or you end up with attempts to set up a shadow infrastructure designed to ensure the right amount of packaging is in the right place at the right time to optimize on minimization of cost of the end product which is now priced with material handling in the equation.
Instead of actually changing things the way you hoped, you may just reorganize the supply chain to a slightly more distributed model where packaging doesn't happen until the latest stage in the process.
You've also invoked change in regulatory framework. Do we end up having to get FDA approval on alternate forms of food packaging or plasticless food transportation systems?
Do the details of the implementation threaten some national security metric with regards to food availability?
I'm mot saying I disagree with the intent at all, mind, but broad strokes without focusing on the nagging details have a way of coming back to haunt one in the long run. There are a lot of metrics and analysis that would need to be done before just declaring one day "Thou shalt!"
Which is probably no less than what will be needed sadly.
Well, presumably the truck needs to go back to the source, so they can bring back the old packaging on the return trip from bringing new goods to the store?
I really wish Amazon would pay their delivery drivers to do this with used Amazon boxes, too.
Not necessarily. Truckers will often pick up entire new loads and chain deliveries depending on whether they're last mile/long haul/commodity/or specialized equipment haulers.
So your packaging job would likely just be another blip on another trucker's route. But it would increase the need for more truckers since you're essentially (worst-case) doubling the number of deliveries to be done per transaction.
The producer externalized this extra truck cost to taxpayers (garbage trucks, landfills and environment aka dumping/littering/pollution). If the consumers see a lot of increased costs for plastic wrapped bananas with the seller having to deal with the waste; that is actually the point and the incentive for the producer to minimize waste.
Make sellers take back waste as a condition to sell. Boom. Problem solved.