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James and I made our first zero waste grocery shopping foray on Friday. We ran into a number of challenges and had to do some thinking and problem-solving. But we also discovered some new products we would not have noticed otherwise.
In the produce aisle we had to change how we buy our carrots. We eat a lot of carrots and usually buy a 3 or 5 pound bag. But we can’t do that any longer because the bags are plastic. Kudos to our co-op, we have the option of buying loose carrots. Since we use mesh produce bags, this was not a hard thing to do. We felt pretty darn good about this.
However, kale and broccoli, while not in bags, come twist tied or rubber banded in bunches. There is no way to get around this. We will have to be sure to save the rubber bands and ties and reuse them.
The only other difficulty we ran into in the produce aisle were the stickers on apples and bananas. We asked and these are not recyclable or compostable. We are pretty sad about this and not sure what to do. Will have to think on it.
In the bulk section, we jammed along with all our own containers. We have to mark the container weight and the item PLU on our container and use the stickers the co-op provides for this. We inquired about the stickers. Not recyclable or compostable. So we have been brainstorming what to do. I think our solution just might be to use a china marker to write directly on the containers. The markers are essentially wax crayons wrapped in paper. So that seems like it should work pretty well all around.
Then we got to the rest of the store with all the packaged items. Standing before the freezer section looking at the frozen veg, all of it comes in plastic bags. Generally what we buy is frozen spinach, corn, peas and green beans. Well, no more. There was no fresh spinach in the produce section so fresh kale is now going to be our green of choice to toss into stews and soups and stir fries. And we won’t be buying corn, peas or green beans out of season.
Peas and green beans are easy enough to substitute (cooked) dry beans and cowpeas. Corn, well next summer we are going to have to hit up the farm stands and cook up and freeze a bunch. We will be growing quite a few more peas and green beans in the garden next summer too.
Our next challenge was dental floss. The container of the floss we usually buy is plastic and not recyclable. But on the shelf was a different brand we never noticed because we didn’t look. It is contained in a 100% recyclable paper package. We cheered but then cringed because the price was $2 more than our other floss. But upon closer examination, the higher price was because there was twice as much floss in the container. That means we have to buy it less often and it is overall cheaper than the floss we usually buy. Big win! The floss is called Eco-Dent Gentle Floss and is unfortunately made out of nylon but real silk floss would be much worse in my opinion, plus not at all vegan. So also a small compromise.
Our next dilemma came with toilet paper. We usually buy unbleached Seventh Generation but it comes encased in plastic wrap. We had three choices between single rolls wrapped in paper, one is cheaper by the roll than what we usually buy, one is the same price, and the third one is a slightly smaller roll made of bamboo priced in the middle of the other two. Not completely out of TP at home, we have time to sample. So we bought a role of the cheaper one and a roll of the bamboo. The bamboo also comes in a four-pack that, if I remember right, is not wrapped in plastic. But that needs verification, especially if we decide to make that one our TP of choice.
The one thing that we bought and are stumped on is cat litter. Litter does not come in anything but plastic bags, even the wheat derived variety. And the litter itself is not eco-friendly. We decided we need to do some research on this to find out more information about what is available. If you know of any good options that don’t cost an arm and a leg, please leave a comment.
The remainder of our shopping went just fine with the only blip being the locally made tortillas have a plastic tie on the bag. But I think I might be able to figure out a way to use the ties in the garden. Putting on my thinking cap for that.
Everything else we bought that came pre-packaged was in 100% recyclable containers. There are some items we did not need to buy on this trip that may present some future dilemmas, but we will figure those out when we get there. Until then, we are overall pretty pleased with how well we did.
I’ve always saved and re-used the rubber bands that come around bunches of broccoli and such. I often miss peeling the sticker off when I’m chopping up banana skins for the worms, and months later when I harvest vermicompost from the bin, I find the banana stickers again! I don’t know why they have to put a sticker on every banana in a bunch, wouldn’t just one suffice?
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Jeane, those stickers! I was surprised to learn they were not compostable because I thought they were. I read somewhere once that produce stickers are edible because people often forget to take them off. But I guess that was old or incorrect information. I bet each banana gets a sticker because people often break up the bunches, but still.
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This is so inspiring and you’ve gotten me thinking about my own shopping habits. Can you use those twist ties to prop up big flowers maybe? Or peas? Lately I’ve been super zealous about bringing my own bags, not just to the grocery store but to Target and other stores too. It’s small but it’s something!
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Thanks Laila! Yes, indeed, that is what I am going to use the twist ties for! They will definitely work in the garden. I just have to find a place to contain until spring, an old pot will do I am sure. Bringing your own bags even to Target is great and definitely makes a difference!
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Kudos to you and your husband for embarking on this. You have inspired me to try and do better and to make some changes. My wife and I do try to shop and do other things that are eco friendly but there is always more to do. I never thought of the cat litter thing. We have cats and thus use it too.
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Thanks Brian Joseph! Definitely always more we can do. Just one shop where we paid attention instead of doing what we always do helped find and make so pretty easy changes. Plus it was actually fun. If you figure to out something about cat litter before I do, please let me know!
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What your post brings home to me is the super huge amount of plastic everywhere, in ways that I don’t usually pay attention to. You are inspiring me to do better.
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Wonderer, it is amazing how much plastic has infiltrated our lives that’s for sure! And we don’t even notice most of the time. I was really surprised all of the frozen vegetables are in plastic bags. The funny thing is, one brand made their plastic bags look like paper!
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That’s so underhand, (making plastic look like paper) – trying to jump on the bandwagon because people are more environmentally concerned now. Hopefully, people can see through this.
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It is underhanded but it is pretty obvious if anyone cares to actually look carefully at the packaging. The problem is, I bet lots of people don’t pay attention and just assume.
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Stefanie, this is so so inspiring. I tried a lot this week and have been ok….but I need your inspiring posts to keep trying and thinking about this!
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I will keep up the posts on how I am doing! Wonderful that you are starting giving it a try yourself! It’s a process and some days/weeks will be better than others. Keep at it as best you can, and thank you! 🙂
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Congratulations to you and James. The more you consider how our food is delivered to us, the more environmentally problematic it becomes. In addition to all you’re doing, all of us who care about the environment (and our health, I’ve been reading that the black plastic containers are particularly toxic) should contact manufacturers to tell them what we want and to remind them of what they’re doing to the world.
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Thanks Joan! We love grocery shopping in general but it was actually fun to be so engaged for a change instead of mindlessly doing what we always do. Interesting about black plastic being particularly toxic. Good to know about!
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What? James? First Astrid has been ousted (well relegated a bit) by a usurper, and now poor Bookman has to contend with this James person! What are you up to oh weedy one. Haha! (Please say hello to James, or whatever his name is today, for me!)
Seriously though, I loved this post. I try to reduce the plastic packaging in the vegetable area. We have been able to buy most vegetables loose for a long time – carrots, peas, beans, brussels sprouts, broccoli, salad greens (but would need to bring a mesh bag for this) etc etc. But I have been commenting lately that just as the media is reporting more on the plastics crisis, and the supermarkets have been patting themselves on their backs about plastic bag ban (for packing your shopping in) they been increasing their pre-packed food. Of course, what is mostly prepacked? The organic foods! You can buy loose zucchini (courgette) but organic ones are packaged. We reckon this is to identify them as the more expensive ones at the checkout, but ironic huh? Our separate green grocers (v. those in the supermarkets) are much better about minimal packaging.
I like your china pen idea for bulk goods, though I think many bulk goods shops here print labels with barcodes? They might be hard to replicate with your pen!?
As for rubber bands? I save them too. I have an overflowing large coffee mug full of them on the kitchen counter. I just need to find more uses for them because I can’t bear to throw them away.
Anyhow, keep up the good work. Posts like these are interesting, fun AND useful.
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Haha Whisperinggums! Bookman has been outed! don’t worry though, I checked with him first and he was ok with it. 😀 How silly that the supermarkets are putting the organic foods in plastic packaging! I don’t shop at a big supermarket so I am not sure what they are doing here. The co-op I shop at has all their produce mostly loose, both conventional and organic and they just have signs up so shoppers know what is what. At the cash register they ask if they don’t know for sure.
Our co-op has PLU numbers (price look-up codes that are 4-5 digits long) on the bulk bins and twist ties and stickers for labeling. Shoppers write the PLU on their containers and the cashier enters them manually when checking out. So a china pen will work just fine for us since no barcodes need to be printed.
I now have an image in my head of an overflowing coffee mug or rubber bands. I bet they get up to no good in your kitchen when you aren’t looking 😉
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What an interesting post! Our co-op allows us to use our own containers and write on them with wax markers, or just on masking tape (which I assume is recyclable? I don’t know!) They also have bulk frozen veggies which is awesome. Sadly wide-mouth plastic containers (yogurt, etc) are not recyclable here anymore so we have been experimenting with alternatives. We do actually reuse those containers a lot for various things, but it’s still annoying. I got some mesh bags and will start using those. Cat litter is a conundrum, have you looked at corn-based litter? Or the newsprint kind?
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Google’s opinion on whether masking tape is recyclable is it depends. The tape is made of paper but the adhesive is questionable. Can’t recycle wide-mouth plastic containers? Wonder why that is. The newsprint kind of litter I have seen comes in a big plastic bag. So still having to do some research on this one. It’s a tough one!
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This is great! Well done!
Sorry, can offer no advice re cat litter as we make our cats crap outside and don’t use litter at all. But we don’t have winters like you do, so it’s not so very tough on them.
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Thanks Helen! Even if we didn’t have tough winters, we don’t let our cats outdoors so we’d still be in the same situation. Hoping to find a solution though 🙂
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This is so inspiring! Thanks!
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Thanks Liz!
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Wow, well done on your first trip and trying to meet your challenge!
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Thanks Iliana!
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This is pretty fascinating. I’m wondering how long it will take for grocery and other stores to phase out all the non-recyclable packaging. I haven’t shopped with an eye to doing this, but I will give it a try next time. For the garden this year, I’m wondering – what does it make most sense for us to grow – given we have a challenging growing environment in central Oregon and some of the produce here is so expensive. It gets very complicated taking into account all these factors./////
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Valorie, I’m pretty sure stores won’t phase out all the non-recyclable plastic unless shoppers start to demand it. Plastic is too cheap and easy and companies won’t change unless they have a reason to. I think at t his point in time it has to come from the bottom up, at least for big corporations and supermarkets.
As for the garden, it’s always tricky deciding what to grow and what not to. I’d love to grow my own corn and I have, but realistically it is only a novelty because I don’t have enough space and it is so much cheaper and easier to buy it from a local organic farmer. I generally go for things I can’t get anywhere or that taste best when picked fresh. Good luck figuring it all out!
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Woooooo! Nice work. Interesting to hear about the problems one runs into in the shop while doing this.
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Thanks Nikki! I fell like I am off to a good start!
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I just was given re-useable mesh produce bags for Christmas! So we’re in the process of figuring out how best to make use of them. The problem I’m finding is that leafy vegetables dry out if they’re stored in the re-usable bags. I’m curious- how do you store your vegetables after bringing them home in reusable bags?
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For leafy greens like kale, spinach, or salad, I just put them in the fridge and they last for ages.
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That’s fantastic biblioglobal! You don’t want to keep your leafy greens in them. We take out the leafy greens when we get home and just put the kale lettuce and broccoli loose in the refrigerator crisper. If we buy unpackaged mixed baby greens then we put them in a bowl in the fridge. We haven’t had any trouble leaving things like potatoes or apples in the bags though.
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Thanks to you and Maggie for the advice! Somehow just leaving them loose in the fridge boggles my mind, but I’ll give it a try.
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I know! It took some getting used to at my house too 🙂
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Stephanie, as others have said, this is very inspiring and so practical. I love following how it is working out for you actually in the market. We do our best here to reduce the amount of plastic we use, and that comes into the house, and I’m always happy to read more and get new tips. We are lucky as we get our fruit and veg from a locally sourced organic company. They work hard to reduce packaging for us, and we are able to hand every bag they do use back for reuse. No air-freighting, low food miles, seasonal foods, I feel very lucky to have them close by!
One difference is that, here in the UK, we do have wood-based cat litter available in large paper bags. So maybe it does exist in the US somewhere, somehow? The real difficulty is what to do with the used litter. Right now, the best I can do, I think, is to put it in biodegradable bags and send it with our small amount of rubbish that goes to landfill.
I had already been wondering about working towards a zero waste bathroom before I saw your post. The one thing I’m really stuck on is toothpaste. (Your floss adventure reminded me!) Any ideas on that are very welcome!
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Thanks Maggie! You are very lucky to have that local produce resource. We can get lots of local organic produce in the late spring through early fall but then there isn’t much local after that. I did just learn that a local organic CSA does a winter greens box. They apparently have greenhouses but I figure it must still be better than getting lettuce all the way from California in winter. I will be looking into giving them a try next winter.
Thanks for the tip about the cat litter! I will see if we have something like that here!
Toothpaste, yes, that is going to be a challenge for us too. I am looking into tooth powder instead of paste. It doesn’t have fluoride, but my city water is fluoridated so I am not that concerned. It comes in a bottle that I think can be recycled instead of a plastic tube. We’ll be checking on it next time we go shopping in a week or two.
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I love this challenge and all the details of how it worked and the problems you came across. Keep us updated!
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Thanks Andrew! It has turned out to be surprisingly fun. I was so much more engaged when I was at the grocery store, it was very much like a treasure hunt of sorts.
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Love this! We have the same issue with buying commercial dog food. We buy the largest bag possible (saves money and we end up with fewer bags per year). 1 thing I’ve done is used the large bags as trash liners- now that we make less trash, we have a smaller trash can and only keep 1 in our house. Another thing I’ve done is collected fall leaves in a dogfood bag which I intend to use this summer as leaf mold in my container garden.
If you don’t have a wax marker, write on your glass containers with sharpie. Steel wool will scrub it off with 3 swipes no problem!
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Avoiding plastic while food shopping sure is a challenge! I too have found that the stickers on apples, kiwis and other fruit are difficult to know what to do with, as you said they can’t be recycled. Shopping at farmers markets may help to get around that problem.
With the rubber bands, i tend to save them and send them to the post office so the staff can use them for keeping the letters together when they’re delivering post to us.
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Hi Leanne! It sure is! Sadly there are no farmers markets in Minnesota in winter. However, when the growing season arrives, I plan on making the most of them. We even joined a csa that we are really excited about. Good idea about the rubber bands! I will have to check with my post office to see if they would be interested in them.
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