Retail minus packaging

Packaging, packaging , packaging = garbage, resources, transportation costs

If packaging products individually was less prevalent, would the way we acquire products be different?

Security for items would be different because they could

• get damaged or soiled by browsing customers
• disappear / be stolen
• be unsafe to customers
• lose their small parts

Maybe shopping would look more like the "ye olde general store"

with the products behind counters accessible only by employees
and you had to ask to see something.

That would mean different jobs - not running packaging machines
but actually interacting with customers.

Or maybe we could stop expecting everything we think we need to be sitting there
in a store
waiting just for us to come by and buy it.

We could order it / put it on lay-away over the internet, maybe?

Then it would be shipped in a bulk shipment
to the store (not couriering individual items to our door - that takes too much fuel) and

we could go pick it up as we run several errands at once or at lunch time.

How did the transition from bulk general store to supermaket come about, anyway.