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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>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 😛
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