I’m a crazy liberal hippie and very interested in low/no waste living. I can’t do everything, but I eat a plant-based diet, my kids wear cloth diapers, and some other stuff. I want to move our pantry toward lower waste, but all our food comes in disposable containers and wrappers. I see lots of low/no waste people reusing jars to store food but here’s where I get stuck in my thinking: if I buy a bag of lentils, it comes in a thin, disposable, plastic bag. If I put those lentils in a reused glass jar, am I not still throwing away the plastic bag they came in??
Follow up: isn’t getting rid of my plastic items to replace them with more sustainable ones creating a bunch of plastic waste? For example, if I ditch my current plastic Tupperware for glass mason jars, aren’t I just putting a bunch of plastic Tupperware in a landfill and creating demand for more mason jars? Which will eventually also end up in a landfill?
I’m sure I’m missing some key part of the argument, but it just kinda seems like creating a fashionably recyclable bubble around myself instead of making some kind of effective change in consumerism…
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I think that zero waste/zero waste living isn’t about not wasting at all, but making up for what you have wasted.
In response to your follow up – getting rid of your plastic items IS creating more waste. The secret is to hold on to and reuse items for as long as they last, and choose sustainable products when you are in a position where you need to buy something. That way you minimize the impact of the things you have to buy, while also minimizing how much you have to buy.
The only reason storing food in a jar works the way it does is because you’re usually removing the use of a new zip-lock, If it’s new zip-lock or old jar, old jar is the waste-reducing option.
Check out r/zerowaste for more.
But short story is consume what you can 100%, reuse as much as possible, compost, recycle (if you actually think the item will get recycled), then throw away.
Buy sustainable stuff/second hand. Use less packaging in general, but especially plastic film that cannot be reused. And get creative with reusing!
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>if I buy a bag of lentils, it comes in a thin, disposable, plastic bag. If I put those lentils in a reused glass jar, am I not still throwing away the plastic bag they came in??
The general idea of no-waste living relies on you having access to stores and markets that sell you goods without packaging or that allow you to bring your own packaging. Instead of buying pre-packaged lentils, for example, you’d be bringing your own container or canvas baggy and put the lentils in there from whatever [container the market is using](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/DWWJE0/small-food-store-in-souk-selling-variety-of-lentils-and-beans-plus-DWWJE0.jpg).
>Follow up: isn’t getting rid of my plastic items to replace them with more sustainable ones creating a bunch of plastic waste? For example, if I ditch my current plastic Tupperware for glass mason jars
Don’t throw away things that are still serviceable to you 😛
I think you’ve gotten to the key of “green washing” where companies try to sell you a thing because it is “better for the environment” when usually using the thing you already have is better. The one that kills me is the “bamboo cutlery” when you can go to any thrift store and get some reusable cutlery there that will last far longer (or use ones you already have if they are mismatched or you don’t care).
A true reduced waste scenerio would be to take your jar to a bulk food store and buy your lentils from them. The bag doesn’t exist here.
Not sure myself, but I’m interested in low-waste living.
A few points:
You may be able to buy most things in bulk and transport them either in jars or in sustainable bags.
Also, I say keep your plastic tupperware until you no longer use it. At that point you may be able to donate it or give it away. Thrift shops do resell plastic tupperware if it’s still of good quality. Whenever you decide to replace them consider the non-plastic alternatives.
While it’s nearly impossible to be completely no waste, I think the best approach is to be aware and keep making improvements, no matter how small.
A personal experience. My wife and I haven’t used straws in years. The server puts a couple of wrapped straws on the table and we didn’t use them. Yay us! Later we noticed that sometimes the server just threw them away with garbage when clearing the table so now we refuse them as the server puts them on the table so they aren’t trashed. It’s such a small thing that has zero impact if two people do this. But if two hundred, then two thousand, then two million do it, it starts to make a difference. Be aware and keep trying to improve.
For every person that lives with a very little carbon footprint, on the opposite side a person is purposefully increasing their footprint in spite of you.
> f I buy a bag of lentils, it comes in a thin, disposable, plastic bag.
https://www.bulkbarn.ca/reusable-container-program/
Observe the add for storage containers. When you read the rest of the comment, that might make you laugh or cry.
For fruit and veggies, you don’t need to bag them at all. I never bag of I’m only buying 1 or2 of something.
However, even if you use a thin bag, that still saves packaging. I needed more spices last week but I did not need more spice jars. By buying bulk and using a plastic bag, I saved several grams of plastic (and a couple of bucks) on each spice I bought.
Buying more at once also reduces waste. That bag consumes the same amount of plastic whether it contains 100g or 3 kg. If the product keeps well and you have a reused container at home that can hold it, you can clearly save a lot of plastic by buying it all in one trip over 30 (note: I did not buy 3kg of oregano). For many goods, the bulk packaging is simpler because there’s little need for anything fancier. Lighter packaging reduces shipping costs and there’s little need to further market a product where they buyer has already made a decision to buy as much as they can carry.
> if I ditch my current plastic Tupperware for glass mason jars
Seems like a fundamental misunderstanding here. If you are buying empty mason jars for storage, then you’re falling in the trap of consumerism (see above). Re-use jars from other products. If you already have perfectly good tupperware, use it until it breaks.
None of this is “don’t buy nice things”, just make sure there’s a reason beyond “plastic bad” to replace the stuff you have.
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