I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen some better product packaging out there. Some soap companies are offering pump bottle refills in plastic bags (which take less energy to create and recycle than the bottles). Some food companies are using foil and paper instead of plastic and plastic. Some household product companies are foregoing any sort of packaging, opting for a hang-tag rather than a bag or box.
But it’s still easy to find hard clamshell packaging. You know, the kind where you’re likely to injure yourself just trying to get it open. The picture above shows how, after working at this thick, rounded plastic showerhead package with scissors, nearly removing my thumb in the process, I’d given up. My partner had a bright idea: use our reciprocating saw. It worked!
Have you had any run-ins with packaging?
Pesky plastic is hard to avoid
I’ve had a few things to say in previous posts about
avoiding plastic bags while grocery shopping. As I hit my local market last night, it occurred to me that I could shop differently to
avoid a lot more plastic. It just means being open to different choices.
You’re going to be thinking “Well, duh!” here, but it was a bit of an Aha moment for me when I thought I’d just look around the veggie section for things that aren’t packaged. So if I want tomatoes, sometimes I’m going to buy tomatoes on the vine, not grape tomatoes (pesky plastic boxes). And if I want mushrooms, I’m going to skip button mushrooms and go for cremenies or portobellos, and put them in a produce bag or paper bag, not buy a little blue box of them covered in plastic wrap. The store has lots of choices, from celery in a plastic sleeve and naked celery, temping Californian berries in plastic boxes or loose local apples, to even cheeses in paper wrapping or cheeses in plastic and meat in butcher paper instead of on foam trays (wrapped in plastic, sometimes two layers!).
It isn’t always easy to shop plastic-free, since sometimes there just aren’t any good choices, particularly at smaller stores that shrink-wrap everything to try to preserve freshness (and therefore reduce waste). Food packaging so quickly becomes recycling or garbage, it’s great for the earth if we can find ways to do without it.
How are you reducing the waste you bring home? Have you swapped one food for another to avoid waste?
What’s left in the garbage when you can recycle and compost?
I’ve been composting for the past few months since I moved from an apartment to a house. My partner and I are pretty good at making sure everything recyclable goes into the right bin. So if it’s not compostable or recyclable, what is it?
Looking at the small bag of stuff I was about to take to the trash — the first full kitchen bag we produced in three weeks — I realized that what was inside was all plastic. It’s full of plastic bags and wrappings that stuff comes in.
Some of these bags may be recyclable, but without any symbols on them, I can’t be sure.
Does anyone know if bags you put produce in count? Do you have a better way of bagging produce at the store?
When I was a kid, sometimes my mom would send my lunch in reused bags from English muffins, milk and so forth. Wasn’t she smart?! Other kids got fresh new paper bags, which they threw out everyday. Maybe I’ll try reusing some of those bags for lunches and snacks.
