Food packaging waste is one of my pet peeves. These are some DIY ways to reduce food packaging waste, like the amount of paper and plastic, that you bring home from the grocery store.
If you’re trying to produce less waste, the grocery store is a great place to start. Food packaging waste is a serious environmental issue. Every year, we throw away about $11.4 billion worth of food packaging, and that figure doesn’t even include the food packaging that you recycle. That’s just what’s going to landfills.
There are lots of non-DIY ways to reduce food packaging waste, like bringing a reusable bottle instead of buying bottled water or skipping the produce bags when you’re buying things like apples and potatoes that are just fine floating loose in your cart.
Buying in bulk is another great way to bring less trash home from the grocery store, especially if you have reusable containers to take home your bulk beans, grains, fruits, and veggies. There’s a DIY solution to that problem in the list below.
Even if you don’t have a zero-waste grocery store where you live, you can still cut back on food packaging waste by cooking from scratch, buying in bulk, and saying no to disposable bags at the checkout.
DIY Ways to Reduce Food Packaging Waste
1. Reusable Snack Bags – Forget the individually-wrapped grab-and-go snacks! Buy (or make) your snacks in bulk, then pack them to go in these easy-to-make fabric bags instead.
2. DIY Produce Bag – When you’re shopping for produce or bulk items, skip the plastic bag from the roll and whip out these lightweight DIY produce bags again.
3. Market Tote – I know: reusable grocery bags are like Going Green 101. But as long as people are still choosing between paper and plastic at the checkout, this is one that needs mentioning.
4. DIY Food Wrap – We also generate food packaging waste at home when we use disposables to store and wrap our food. If you’re not putting your leftovers into storage containers with lids, you can wrap them in homemade food wrap instead of saran wrap!
5. Cloth Lunch Bag – Never buy a pack of paper lunch bags again! This cloth bag is cuter AND less wasteful. Wins all around.
This article originally appeared at Crafting a Green World; republished here with permission.
Buy bulk with your own bags! It’s usually cheaper, I always hand my physical receipt back to the cashier also…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GApTdfNQBwc&t=61s
I believe that consumers themselves are to blame for much food packaging. People steal or “sample”, damage food by improper handling (in search of the perfect specimen), don’t use tongs or spoons for making their selection, etc.