I buy these little plastic boxes of lunch meat at Fred Meyer. I’ve made a few into sandwich carrying boxes for my lunch, but now just recycle them instead. It seems really wasteful… maybe I just need to change what I’m eating…
I want to purchase some zero waste products (like produce bags and such) for stocking stuffers/small gifts this year. If anyone has recommendations/sources, I’d love to hear about it.
Great thread!
Packaging. This is a huge problem with food. I almost never eat atChick Fil A (almost a cult in the South) because I feel too guilty about throwing away all the packaging their food comes in. There’s no recycling at the restaurants and most towns by me don’t have recycling.
Now that my kid is off to school and there’s only 2 of us at home, I’ve taken to getting prepackaged meal plans to avoid wasting food. Blue Apron is pretty good about packaging. A local grocer, Fresh Market, sells meals too, but I hestitate in buying them because they use excessive amounts of plastic in the packaging.
When I do have extra food I always store it in glass containers with lids so I don’t have to use Saran Wrap, aluminum foil or plastic baggies.
Our water doesn’t taste very good, but I find that our Britta filter helps with that, so we don’t use bottled water.
I’m thinking about downsizing our refrigerator significantly since there’s only the 2 of us now and we really don’t store much food.
Has anyone tried any of the beeswax wrapping goods? I’ve heard the ones at Trader Joe’s aren’t good. Any suggestions?
I use Bee’s wrap, I have one piece i always use for a cut onion, its pretty faded, pretty quickly, but other than that works fine. I tend to just use certain wrap pieces for the same items over and over, though I also use glass with a lid, either purchased or my stock of Bon Maman jam jars which are perfect for food storage with straight sides so you can easily empty them.
Hmm, that is an interesting product. I was just mulling how to keep half an avocado fresh without using my usual plastic wrap (best idea on Internet when I searched was cost cut side with olive oil). But this looks intriguing, too. It says on the Bee’s Q&A to wash with cold water — it doesn’t sound super sanitary to me, then. Thoughts on that?
I wash with hot water, maybe that’s why it faded
I gave my DIL a set of the wax wrap from the company @somemom mentioned last night for Chanukah. She seemed to like them.
Anyone use reusable produce bags?
My D1 brought up the wax wraps and asked from some from Santa. Santa ordered a set for her and a set for herself. 
Haven’t tried them yet, though. Also interested in reusable produce bags.
Guess who’s getting Bee’s Wrap in their Xmas stocking this year? I KNEW I’d get some plastic reduction tips here! I recycle, I don’t drink bottled water. But I do buy zip lock bags for food storage. I do reuse them many times over… but it’s still plastic I buy, and wish I could do without (or with a whole lot less.) Thank you CC!
Our trash can used to fill up with newspaper and all their advertising supplements. A lot less trash now that we dropped the subscription. Same with magazines. No magazines you read once and toss, less trash.
We recycled them (had curbside pickup as far back as the 90s where I lived). But agree that there is a lot less paper coming into our house now.
We did recycle the paper, but not buying it in the first place is better than recycling.
Yes… if we could just find ways to buy fewer plastics now.
I wish our engineering office had less paper. I think it’s worse than it used to be. Since it’s so easy to send drawings electronically, architects make frequent changes and emaul us new drawing sets constantly. It’s too hard to go back and forth between pdf pages, so I end up printing drawings out, over and over… I feel like I’m drowning in paper sometimes. 
@MaineLonghorn Mine’s an accounting firm, and I agree completely. I’ve moved twice in 2018, and decided paper was the enemy, and most of it is client related.
A piece of onion or an avocado can stay fresh upside down on a plate in the fridge, or in a covered jar. My mom always put plates on bowls with leftovers. Or an upside down bowl on a plate of food . Drove me crazy as a kid because she refused to buy plastic wrap, but now I know she was right.
I do subscribe to magazines, as the written word is something I value supporting and so many magazines are struggling. When done, I take them to the hospital waiting room. True about newspaper subscriptions. Such paper waste, though I read the print more thoroughly than the online versions.
This is a product for covering containers. https://www.amazon.com/Silicone-Stretch-Lids-Reusable-Bowl-Covers-Stretchable/dp/B07D8NZ7P7/ref=sr_1_1?m=A1TMAM4LZY2CQV&s=merchant-items&ie=UTF8&qid=1540932746&sr=1-1&keywords=B07D8NZ7P7
Now I need an analysis as to whether silicone is that much better of a product than plastic in term of environmental impact.
Speaking of produce. That darkened avocado is not radioactive! That lacking symmetry vegetable is perfectly nutritious. Why are we throwing out perfectly fine food?!
Re drowning in paper, our office set the default on the printers to printing double-sided and we saved a lot of paper. Folks complained at first but quickly got used to it.
I pass on my magazines to my BIL. He really seems to enjoy them. I think he passes them on or recycles them.
I use foaming hand soap. I purchase the 64 oz. refill bottle of the soap and add maybe 1 oz. to the empty bottle. Then I fill the rest with water. I have used some of the original small bottles over 5 years. A 64 oz. bottle lasts me over a year, so I don’t think that I am wasting as much plastic.