|
One green living ideal is to reduce your trash so much that you produce none at all. Reduce trash by buying products with the least possible packaging or with recyclable packaging. Shopping the green way — by seeking the least-wasteful packaging — takes some time, but you'll immediately see a difference in your trash output.
Here are some general tips to guide you around the grocery store, where most packaging trash comes from:
- Buy fresh food that doesn't come prepackaged. Place fruits and vegetables directly into your cart — skip the plastic bags hanging in the produce department. You can also bring bags from a previous shopping trip to reuse.
- Avoid individually packaged items. Buy a larger container of juice and send the kids to school with juice in a screw-top container instead of those small, individual juice boxes. The same goes for prepackaged kids' lunches in plastic trays that have cheese and crackers and such in them; dividing up cheese and crackers at home into reusable containers that can go into lunchboxes reduces waste considerably.
- Opt for items in glass or other recyclable containers instead of plastic containers that can't be recycled. Try to avoid any plastic that can't be recycled through your local system.
- Avoid aerosol cans altogether, if possible, because you can't reuse or recycle them. For cleaning and toiletry products, purchase products in pump-action bottles, for example.
- Take your own canvas bags, shopping basket, or reused plastic bags with you when you shop so that you don't load up on more plastic bags. If you have a choice between paper and plastic bags, choose paper, which is more easily recycled than plastic. Of course, first reuse it if you can, perhaps to wrap parcels for mailing.
 | Take your attack on product packaging one step further by sending packaging back to manufacturers with a letter telling them why you won't be buying their products again. Stores and manufacturers will get the message if sales drop for heavily packaged items or products in nonrecyclable packaging. |
 | All packaging is not necessarily bad, even if it's not recyclable (although, obviously, it's far better if it can be recycled). It may protect goods so that they can be transported without damage, thus reducing waste. It also may maximize the amount of a particular product that can be packed into a container such as a large box, and if fewer containers need to be used for the same amount of goods, fewer trucks are needed to transport an order, thus decreasing greenhouse gas emissions. Manufacturers may be thinking primarily of how to cut their transport and damage costs, but they're still being greener as a result of minimizing packaging. |
|
