Does it bother you that so much of what we eat comes in plastic packaging? When we sorted through our trash a few weeks back, I was horrified to see the pile of non-recyclable packaging. Cereal and crackers are great culprits. Plastic packaging in a box. It’s too much.
And then there are all those plastic bags that we use at the grocery store for fruit and vegetables. Even worse — fruit packaged in plastic boxes.
Which is why reusable cloth bags make so much sense to me. I chose the Acme organic cotton bags, which come in two sizes (17″ X 13″) and (10″ X 8″). You can get them for $2.75 each at Reusablebags.com. The larger one is perfect for fruits, vegetables and breads. The smaller size is great for bulk foods, such as flour, sugar, cereals and other foods that can be purchased bulk. (Tip: store your bulk foods in glass jars — it’s a great way to make good use of something that would otherwise end up in the recycling bin.)
The challenge I’ve found thus far is that with the exception of Whole Foods and local co-ops, such as San Francisco’s Rainbow Grocery, which carries more than 800 types of bulk foods, you are limited to the they types of products you can purchase. I’m not sure what the solution is other than it’s important to support grocery stores that offer a broad range of bulk foods and encourage those that don’t, to add additional products into the mix.
The second challenge I’ve encountered is that many of the “most packaged” products are not available (to my knowledge) in bulk, such as crackers. Perhaps the easiest solution would be to eliminate these products from the grocery list.
All that said, reusable cloth bags make bulk food shopping easy — and packaging-free.
Next week: we welcome Oliver, our new 20-gallon can.