Happy New Year Everyone! I hope celebrations were fun, safe and happy.
Since it is the time of year when resolutions are a thing, James and I have decided to challenge ourselves to Zero Waste Grocery Shopping. What does that mean? That means that when we shop for food, everything we buy either has no packaging or recyclable packaging, nothing goes in the trash.
According to Mother Earth Living, food packaging makes up 40 percent of all plastic produced. And that does not include plastic bags. Considering those bags, however, in the United States, 100 billion plastic bags are used per year and only 1 percent are properly recycled. Those bags are made from 12 million barrels of oil.
James and I are already pretty good at the grocery store. We bring our own shopping bags, we buy a lot of food in bulk, and a couple months ago we bought a set of mesh produce bags that are really great. We also make an effort to bring our own containers for the bulk aisle and not use plastic bags. It’s working out pretty well but we are not at zero waste.
In deciding to commit to zero waste, it means we might not be able to buy some items we rely on, we might need to find a different brand, do without, or make our own from scratch. James has decided that if we find we can’t buy certain products, he is going to write to the company and tell them about it.
Our first foray to the grocery store will be later this week. I don’t expect we will manage zero waste our first time out. It is going to be a process, but we are committed to figuring it out and making it work.
Will you join us in our Zero Waste Grocery Shopping Challenge?
If the challenge of Zero Waste Grocery Shopping seems overwhelming, here are some strategies to help you get started:
- Bring your own bags. Probably everyone knows this one already and brings at least a few bags to carry groceries home in. But consider expanding bring-your-own-bag to include produce and bulk items.
- Say no the the receipt. How often do you actually look at your grocery receipt afterwards? And if it has coupons on the back of it, how often do you really use any of them? Most receipts are printed on thermal paper that has BPA in it so saying no to a receipt will make less waste and save you from BPA exposure. Of course, you need to say no BEFORE the cashier prints the receipt. In 2018 the food co-op where we shop began asking if we want the receipt and not just printing it off automatically. We say no, and haven’t regretted it once.
- Choose for the long term. There will be items like pasta sauce or salad dressing that you can’t buy in bulk. Choose larger containers, preferably glass, which will use less packaging overall because you will be buying fewer smaller jars. Even better, consider making your own sauces and dressings. Be sure you recycle the container when it is empty or wash it out and reuse it for bulk aisle purchases.
- Pay attention to the little things. Plastic berry containers, bags of lettuce, plastic mesh potato and onion bags, twist ties, rubber bands. Buy your produce loose and use a mesh produce bag to contain them. If your grocery store does not sell produce loose, talk to the produce manager and ask them to. If they say no way, consider joining a CSA for your produce or shop at the farmer’s market. As for the twist ties and rubber bands, if you really can’t escape them, reuse them.
- Buy in bulk as much as you can. Bring your own jars and bags. Bulk items like beans and lentils are so much cheaper than buying cans. Also, if there is something you buy and use a lot of, check and see if you can get a unit discount. For instance, James and I make our own soymilk, bread, and peanut butter and eat a lot of oatmeal. Soybeans, flour, peanuts and oats arrive at our food co-op in huge 30 – 50 pound paper bags. We get a 10% discount for buying the entire bag. Saves money and packaging and the paper bags are 100% recyclable and also work well as weed barriers in the garden.
Zero Waste Grocery shopping is a huge challenge, I am well aware. I’ve been working on it for a long time and I shop at places that encourage it and don’t think I am weird for asking whether the bulk stickers they have for writing down tare and PLU numbers are recyclable. I sometimes buy something swathed in plastic because it is more convenient and I want it and I can’t be bothered that day to consider an alternative or go without. It’s hard.
But we aren’t aiming for perfection here. We are all on a journey and even when we want to make changes it takes time. Maybe you don’t make it to Zero Waste in 2019 but reduce your grocery shopping waste by 50%. That’s huge! Start small and go from there. If you don’t already bring your own grocery bags every time you shop, begin with that. If that is second nature for you, then up your game to produce bags and bulk containers.
Once you commit to Zero Waste Grocery Shopping and start paying attention, you will find a natural progression toward waste reduction. Are you up for the challenge?
If you have any of your own tips and tricks for Zero Waste Grocery Shopping, please share!
it sounds difficult but worth the effort. I try to always remember my reusable shopping bags, but haven’t focused on other means of eliminating waste yet.
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Jeane, the more waste you begin to eliminate the harder it gets, but at the beginning it is easier than you might imagine. 🙂
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Oh I had not heard about this but what a great goal. I’ll be honest, I don’t know that I could do it but I do try to remember my reusable shopping bags. Will have to see what other small changes we can make. Happy New Year!
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Happy New Year Iliana! I bet you could start by making some small changes. With some things it isn’t as hard as you might think 🙂
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Hi! I’ve been following you for a while and enjoy your posts. This isn’t spam. I found this company and it’s much cheaper than the grocery store. I’m not sure if they deliver to your area or not. http://misfitsmarket.refr.cc/angelacapinera
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Hi! Thanks for your comment! Misfit Market looks awesome! What a great idea. They don’t operate in my area. It is interesting though how we have all been conditioned to think food needs to look perfect or it isn’t any good. When I first began getting apples off my own tree every single one was lumpy (and still is) and it took a big mind shift to not worry there was something wrong with them. I am glad there is a company out there that is making an effort to keep all the unperfect veg but still completely edible from being wasted!
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Awesome!
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My wife and have been doing what we can for awhile now. We always bring out own bags to every store we go to. We tend not to buy many prepackaged foods anyway. We also buy in bulk when we can mostly to save money. However, as you say, it is hard to be perfect. The receipt thing is a good idea. I will need to see if the stores that we use can manage not to bring it though.
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Nice work Brian Joseph! Good luck with the receipts 🙂
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Happy New Year Stefanie! Wishing you and James a happy, healthy and peaceful 2019! This is such a great initiative and I will try and join. In our part of the developing world, not everything is doable, but getting your own shopping bags and jars and try to source food which use non plastic packaging is a great way to start and I will ensure I ho down that path. I think I WILL also follow up on James’s idea to write to the companies that package in plastic, though I am not sure how much I can change! Thank You so much for a brilliant idea and an awesome way to start the new year!
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Happy New Year cirtnecce! Thank you for your good wishes! I hope the same for you 🙂 Hooray for taking on the challenge! I know everyone has a different situation but any little bit helps and might even rub off on other people who inquire about what you are doing and why. Good luck!
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I am trying to do this too. Not zero waste, just cut down on waste. The amount of plastic in the world is incredible. It’s such a simple thing, but now I am going to refuse a receipt. And I’m going to start using shampoo bars instead of bottled shampoo.
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Excellent wonderer! Even if you never get to zero cutting down is fantastic. Oh, shampoo bars, what a great idea! I had not thought about that. Now I am going to have to see if I can find a curly hair friendly one after my current shampoo runs out 🙂
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What a great challenge… and very challenging! I like the idea of mesh produce bags; ive tried this but haven’t been successful in implementing them yet, but maybe this is the year to try again. We always use reusable grocery bags. Every once in awhile we forget them and have to use a paper bag; we joke that it’s a treat for our cat. He definitely enjoys the occasional paper bag! Good luck on this — it certainly is challenging.
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LOL we do the same with paper bags for our cats! 😀 I thought about sewing my own mesh bags, but I found some online that were inexpensive and they have little tare weight tags sewn into the side so the cashier knows how much the bag weighs and doesn’t charge us for it. The hardest thing has been to remember to not leave greens in the bags because the wilt super fast. Good luck!
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I’ll join you, while committing myself to less waste for this year. Zero waste would be extremely difficult as we have no bulk stores and having a very strict diet complicates zero further. I also am going to look into your idea of writing to product managers about opening up possibilities for buying in bulk more.
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Cath, less waste is always better even if zero is not possible. Everyone’s circumstances are different and that’s ok. I think writing product managers is potentially are great thing. They probably don’t hear much from customers and hopefully will be willing to consider suggestions. 🙂
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Best of luck!
I am mega intimidated by the idea of trying to do this. I don’t think I have enough energy leftover from surviving–let alone the time planning for it requires–to make it happen. Maybe once my daughter is older I could consider it.
I have gotten back into dumpster diving lately though, as that has always been an important sort of waste-reduction protest for me. It continues to totally enrage me, however, BECAUSE WTF ARE FRUITS THAT HAVE FLOWN FROM ACROSS THE WORLD DOING ENDING UP IN THE FUCKING TRASH. Bah.
Aaanyway, look forward to hearing about how this goes! Cheers
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Thanks Niki! No need to be intimidated. I completely understand circumstances and how actual zero waste is a whole lot of work. I bet there are still things you can do though that aren’t terribly hard like bring you own bags to the store and use mesh produce bags instead of plastic.
Food waste is a huge problem and something that should not happen. There is a food waste campaign going on in my city right now with signs up everywhere. I am hoping people notice them and start to change. With the turn of the year, my city is also requiring restaurants to compost their food waste. And there are several vegan restaurants in town that give their food scraps to the two farm animal sanctuaries just outside the metro area. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.
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Happy New Year! I so admire you and am inspired by you. Happy Footprint-Reducing and Happy Reading
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oh, and we have one grocery store that emails receipts as an expectation, “You choose an emailed receipt, yes?” 🙂
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Happy New Year Care! Our first foray of the year to the grocery store happens tonight so we will see how it goes! I will be sure to make regular reports. That’s fantastic news about your grocery store! I hope more of them start doing that!
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What a great challenging goal! I am trying to be more aware and do what I can. I thought that the shop had a legal obligation to give out receipts. Please update us with your discoveries! I will look into my (reachable) options. The law here has forbidden plastic shopping bags but there is so many plastic containers and with several layers each!
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Hi Smithereens! That’s great the law forbids plastic shopping bags. Those plastic containers though can really add up, can’t they? Thanks for trying to do what you can! I will make regular updates. Our first grocery shopping attempt of the year is tonight so we’ll see how well we do!
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Kudos to you for taking this on. Supermarkets here in UK are making announcements about some of their initiatives but it’s all going to be very slow to materialise in any meaningful way. Some things just seem impossible to buy loose (berries)
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Thanks BookerTalk! Can’t get berries loose here either. But if we only buy them in season from local farms they comes in paper containers we can recycle. We sometimes buy frozen berries in the off season, but won’t be doing that any longer since they all come in plastic bags. Thankfully my garden is producing more and more berries every year. We just finished the last of the raspberries. It’s going to be a long wait until June when there are fresh berries again. Hopefully your markets get all their initiates rolled out sooner rather than later!
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sadly the markets that are nearest to me are really poor – very predictable stock.
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That’s a real shame. Still, it’s possible to change so maybe someday they will 🙂
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Stefanie, what a wonderful idea! I am looking forward to reading about this.
Although we always take our own bags, most of this isn’t really feasible for us at the moment. However, I am going to start refusing receipts, that is interesting. And I can write to the supermarket to urge them to reduce their plastic. They have just introduced some plastic packaging that is apparently biodegradable, I hope that is true. Anyway, you are inspiring and I am rooting for you!
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Thanks Helen! Just doing what you can where you are is the only place you can start and maybe, eventually, other opportunities will arise. Writing to supermarkets is huge I think. That is good news about the biodegradable plastic. I do hope it’s true! Thanks for being willing to try a few things!
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My one suggestion is, when one is buying stuff with packaging, to remember that not all recycling is equally good. Metal and paper are very efficient to recycle, glass and plastic less so. So bear that in mind if you have a choice.
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Great point dollymix! I read somewhere that plastic has a very short recycling life and like you point out, is not as efficient to recycle in the first place. And unlike organic packaging, it will never ever degrade, so definitely something to keep in mind.
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Stefanie, that was really amazing to read. My family of 6 (almost 7) are working towards being less wasteful. I’ve really been studying and looking for ways to incorporate it into our crazy lifestyle. Just over the last couple of months I’ve realized we are really wasteful just due to us being a large family. Reading the tips you gave for the zero waste grocery shopping challenge gave me some great ideas and tips to use for in the future. I’m super excite to say I purchased some mess produce bags and should be getting them in the next week or so.
I do have a question, we use a lot of whole milk due to having a one year old who just finished breast feeding so how should we go about buying milk in bulk or not in plastic containers to lower the amount of plastic we use? I know that’s a crazy question to ask! Thank you so much for your time!
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Hi cwilson! Thank you! You have a full house! That is really awesome that you bought mesh produce bags and it makes me happy that you are so excited to get them 🙂
Milk, that’s a tough one. I am vegan and we make our own plant-based milk at home, but hmm, there must be something you could do. Do you live somewhere that might have a milk delivery service from a dairy? They would most likely deliver milk in glass bottles that they would then take back from you, wash and reuse. Like the old-fashioned milkman. Plus you would be helping out local farmers. 🙂
Alternatively, there is the option to cut back on your animal milk consumption and make up the difference with plant milk. It is really easy to make oat milk and nut milks at home without any special equipment.
If neither of those work, the only thing I can think of is to buy the biggest container of milk you can–is is still a gallon or can you get bigger these days?–and then try to find things you can use the plastic containers for like make them into scoops for the kids to play with in the sand, use them to grow herbs or flowers, that sort of thing. Then recycle what you can’t re-purpose.
If I can think of anything else I will let you know! Good luck!
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I love the idea of zero-waste shopping. When my co-op was still open (it closed for good in December, and I’m still grieving its loss), I got pretty close to zero-waste shopping. I used my own re-usable bags and otherwise purchased items with recyclable packaging. Now that I’m getting most of my groceries online, I don’t get to choose the packaging. My produce comes from a CSA, and all of the packaging is recyclable. Everything else comes from an online store that goes overboard with the plastic. I’ve started to learn which items come with extra plastic, and I can try to avoid them.
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