Grocery Shopping
So realizing that food is one of our favourite subjects, we decided to
seek extra help and went zero waste grocery shopping with Sarah
McGaughey (you can read more about her on our links page). Think about
your normal trip to the grocery store and how much waste you create. For
starters, there are the countless plastic bags you use. Then there’s all
the packaging in the products you buy. It’s enough to drive a zero waste
person crazy! In Sarah’s words, some people think she already IS crazy,
but for the group of us who went shopping with her during our March
Break, we found zero waste grocery shopping very enlightening. We’re not
expecting anyone to go the lengths Sarah does (check out her link to see
the determination she has to make zero waste happen), but here are some
of our simple suggestions for your next grocery trip.
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Always bring your own cloth bags or
grocery crates for your groceries |
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Don’t put your fruits or vegetables in
plastic bags. Either just put them straight into the cart (easy to
do for green peppers, asparagus bunches, broccoli); or re use your
plastic bags and put the fruits in them; or put the fruits right
onto the weight scale and then toss them in your bag. A word of
caution - as Mr. Fernandes learned, ripe pears in a knapsack – not a
good move! |
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Milk CAN be bought in refillable
bottles. Thanks to Harmony Foods for making this available. Maybe
ask YOUR grocery store if they’ll start carrying Harmony Milk
bottles. |
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Try to buy in bulk when you can (bring
your own containers to fill up when you go bulk shopping) |
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We still can’t find a way to avoid
garbage with our beloved chips so we’re just going to have to keep
writing to the chip companies to try and get them to change their
packaging. |
There’s no doubt that when you try
to do some of these things that people will look at you like you’re a little
loopy, but if enough of us start doing it …. Thanks for a fun March Break
field trip Sarah! |
