Zero Waste Grocery Shopping
Waste is a huge issue, folks. It's in the ground, it's in the ocean and it's even in animals. Anything we can do to decrease the amount of waste we create is a step in the right direction. In this post, I'll tell you all about my favorite tips for zero waste grocery shopping!
1. BYOB
Obvi, bringing your own bags is an amazing way to cut down on plastic waste. You can bring smaller see-through bags for things like fruits and veggies, cloth bags or Bees Wrap for bread and cheese, and larger bags to haul it all home. Some cities and states have embraced this by banning plastic bags altogether, which is super exciting, and some grocery stores, like ALDI, just don't do the bag thing. Encouraging your city or your grocery store to ban plastic bags by calling or writing to them can help you make an even greater difference.
2. Bring Reusables to the Bulk Bins
When you buy from bulk bins, you can usually put the food in your container of choice. If you choose to fill reusable bags or jars, you can eliminate plastic waste altogether. Sometimes stores don't want you to use reusable containers at the bulk bin, so you might have to be a little sneaky to get around this- use their plastic bags the first time and then just bring those bags back to reuse them next time. This isn't ideal since those plastic bags are usually pretty flimsy, but it's better than nothing.
3. Buy Packaged Foods in Bulk
Besides buying from the bulk bins, you can also buy bulk versions of packaged foods that you can't find in the bulk bins. In an ideal world, we wouldn't need to buy packaged foods at all, but that's just not realistic. To decrease the amount of waste from your packaged foods, buy your standbys in bulk to decrease the amount of packaging per ounce of food. Buying a family size box Cheerios will use less cardboard and plastic per ounce than buying several smaller boxes of Cheerios. Embrace this math by buying the bulk versions of your fav packaged foods.
4. Choose Minimally Packaged Foods
Some brands choose to package their foods in a million non-recyclable layers of plastic, cardboard and unidentified shiny stuff. This is frustrating, especially when the packaging is on fruits and vegetables that already have built-in natural packaging (hello, plastic wrapped banana) or things that don't need to be portioned out (ditch the 100 calorie packs, people). Skip this unnecessary packaging and go for items that are minimally wrapped. If you're a real sustainability rock star, you can send *constructive* emails to package-heavy companies encouraging them to change their ways.
5. Buy More Fruits and Veggies
Fruits and veggies usually have wayyy less packaging than grains because they either have natural packaging (hi again, banana peels) or can be easily washed. This means that if you focus on buying more produce and fewer packaged grains or ready-made meals, you'll skip a whole lot of waste without even trying.