[spodek]

I found a simple 80% solution for home plastic: I avoid packaged food in favor of fresh, unwrapped fruits, vegetables, and foods from bulk bins.

Now I have a load of garbage to empty a little less than once a year and a load of metal and plastic recycling once or twice a year.

Plus my food tastes better and costs less.

Everyone is free to do what they want, and experience shows someone will have to tell me the solution doesn't work for someone, but I hope people do similar so the manufacturers' warehouses fill with plastic instead of the oceans and they stop producing it.

[cmroanirgo]

My niece has now stopped eating meat... because of plastic. She started out avoiding plastic wrapped meats, and went to a butcher instead, only to find (due to food handling laws in my country) that they used one disposable glove per customer! I applaud her resilience in this aspect: we need to do what we can to stop buying stuff that uses plastic - especially when it doesn't need to.

[sexydefinesher]

Wouldn't the lost productivity of sick people due to lower hygiene be more harmful to the environment than the plastic gloves?

[esotericn]

This assumes that:

- the plastic glove (and not e.g. hand washing) is the only way to solve this problem

- eating meat is necessary at all, as the OP states, it's not; certainly not in typically accepted volumes, anyway

[raverbashing]

Yes

Plastics have helped a lot in the hygiene aspects of food, as much as some people think (very naively) that food can't make you sick. Especially if you live in a country with warmer temperatures and low infrastructure (hello Climate Change)

[rficcaglia]

I ran a restaurant in college and had to become a certified food manager (a step up from the line food handler). So while I won’t prentend to have all the data, it was clear that simple processes prevent 99.99% of food borne illness, and not one law required plastic gloves! In fact they expressly warned NOT to use gloves if you were not sure they were food grade.

If you follow the simple rules, most illness is caused by tainted supply.

The most common infraction I saw was failing to wash hands, followed by not separating meats from other stations. (Work surface, knives, hand washing, etc)

In a busy kitchen, you would be shocked at how much cross contamination occurs every single day, plastic or not. Plastic is not the solution, training and oversight is the essential thing.

[raverbashing]

I don't disagree with the points you make, but you're thinking of "the last mile". Think of the steps before the food got to the restaurant or consumer:

For example: delivery of water to locations where the local source is suspected to be contaminated, packaging of meat products from market to consumer, handling of refrigerated or wet products, to name a few

Of course it's not the whole story, a lot of food-borne illnesses have their origin at the producing farm.

[esotericn]

Yep. Not only do you avoid plastic but you eat better too because you have hard lines that are not to be crossed.

No more chocolate bars, ready meals, pot noodles, bags of crisps or whatever else.

Even if you end up buying a bag of rice in plastic you're cutting down the waste by a huge amount because even a small one gives you ten or more servings.

[Scoundreller]

And larger containers have less surface area:volume —> less packaging.

Which is why I really hate it when manufacturers reduce pack sizes.

[esotericn]

Small pack sizes are such a load of shite.

Some small number of people are travelling.

For the rest, 500g of rice is a pointlessly small amount. It lasts forever, is dense enough to stash, etc.

[baroffoos]

I once got a 10KG sack of rice from an Asian store once. After a year it got full of tiny bugs less than 1mm in size. Now I buy 1kg bags that I can more easily seal airtight with pegs.

[Ensorceled]

I divide the 10kg sack into a bunch of mason jars and avoid the pests.

[baroffoos]

Thats the correct way to go about it really. I will do it this way next time.

[p1necone]

But you're missing out on all that extra protein!

[logfromblammo]

For bulk foods, like grains, you can use aluminized polyester film bags, and blow in pure nitrogen or drop in an oxygen-absorber packets while sealing the bag. Then you put the bags in a food-grade bucket and seal it. The bags can have resealable zip-locks on them.

Yes, this uses plastic, but all of it is reusable when using certain bag-sealing methods.

[Scoundreller]

I’ve seen OJ go from 2L to 1.89, and now 1.75L.

Pasta: 1kg to 908g.

It’s bullshit.

[18pfsmt]

Juice tastes good, but it removes the fiber from the ingestion of that fructose that tells our body how to digest it. It is not healthful. Juice is basically a refined food, and I prefer raw food.

[gdwatson]

They're going from metric to US measures?

[jfk13]

They're increasing the price without changing the price tag.

[Scoundreller]

It goes the other way too. Pop used to be in 591mL bottles, now it’s 500. Jerks.

[Reedx]

I mean c'mon, individually plastic-wrapped apples? It's crazy how much unnecessary packaging there is at the grocery store.

But yeah, it is possible to avoid a lot of it. And if you're really dedicated, you can essentially get to zero waste. Here's someone that was able to fit 5 years of their trash into mason jar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT0uqEPzbd0

[TeMPOraL]

Been there. Complained about this very thing on HN, and got shot down. Apparently, individually plastic-wrapped fruits exist because of people with motor disabilities.

I accept that, and I understand that under our economy, it's better (cheaper) for people with such aliments that these fruits are just another item in grocery stores, and not specialty item in special stores (which would be sold for a much higher price). Still, I can't shake the feeling that this is wrong, there must be a better way of supporting people with motor problems than carpet-bombing shops with environmentally absurd individually packaged fruits, and exposing those to regular people without motor problems, some of which will start buying (and thus creating demand) out of convenience or false perception of quality...

[rdl]

I think the pre cut/wrapped apple slices and oranges and such are arguably for disabled people (or children, or convenience, and priced at a 5-10x premium) but the individually wrapped whole fruit, which are sold in much higher volumes, make less sense.

[trickstra]

What's worse than individually plastic-wrapped apples? Individually plastic-wrapped bananas or oranges. They do already have their own natural wrapping.

[vostok]

Worse yet are styrofoam padded pears

[prawn]

I like the boiled eggs in plastic at Walmarts. As though it's just a stretch too far to expect someone to take eggs in their existing shells and boil them briefly!

[sleavey]

You can even provide boiled eggs plastic free. In the UK and Germany I've seen eggs painted with a special paint that seals the cooked egg and lets you keep it outside a fridge for weeks.

[mixmastamyk]

I get those in the summer when too hot to cook.

[sleavey]

One absolutely crazy problem, at least in the UK, is that supermarkets sell pre-packed fruits and vegetables cheaper than the equivalent weight loose. I can't think of any logical reason why.

[xyzzyz]

Produce sold loose have to be nicer, bigger, with fewer flaws. The customers will pick those, and the less perfect produce is left to spoil. You have to remember that the retail prices of produce are as much function of the wholesale cost as it is of the spoilage rates.

[psychrometer]

I assume the prepackaged varieties take less time to check out.

[baroffoos]

I just found I have one of those bulk bin stores near my office. Its slightly more expensive and I have to bring my own containers but I will never again buy a single use packaged item that I could get packaging free from this store.

The insane amounts of damage we are doing with all this plastic needs to be controlled. Recycling is not the answer, reduce and reuse is.

[outside1234]

I'm so glad to hear its not just me. If anyone else is reading this, I highly recommend these reusable mesh bags:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BW1DSMV

Way better than the plastic bags at the store.

[rficcaglia]

Local farmers markets and reusable canvas bags. I know not everyone lives in areas with these options, though.

We were able to reduce our garbage and recycling in half.

But I also think taxing and or regulating packaging at the manufacturer for the rest is needed.