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…
In: Other
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.
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