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 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.
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