If you are excited about baking and cooking your own foods, then you can eliminate the need for many products that require packaging by finding a place that sells foods in bulk (Superstore and Safeway both do, and I am sure there are many others). I don't drink many fluids other than water, unless I make them myself (such as lemonade and grapefruit juice), so the packaging is avoided for those. However, I drink milk, and have recently discovered Avalon dairy products, which are sold in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and which have certified organic options available. The best part: real glass bottles! I buy mine from Marketplace IGA on Esplanade in North Vancouver and they accept rinsed bottles to be returned, which will then be taken by Avalon, rinsed thoroughly (and disinfected) and reused. There is no recycling involved, and, of course, no plastic. The milk tastes better, in my opinion, and I heartily recommend trying it out if you drink dairy (they have skim, low fat, cereal cream, whipping cream, as well as many other products). If you are living in the US, there are many dairies that deliver or at least produce milk in glass bottles as well.
The added bonus is that you can keep the bottles if you want, and reuse them as you see fit. I use a 1 L bottle as my water bottle at work (even water tastes better out of glass bottles), and I make lemonade for Tim every weekend and have started separating it into the 1/2 L bottles so he can take them with him for work. We also use them to store extra water in the fridge and other homemade juices.
What do you use as lids for your bottles? I have accumulated some Avalon bottles, but I live in Whitehorse, Yukon. I can't return them for deposit, and I can't bring myself to throwing them into the recycling bin. I'm looking for ways to use them, but not sure what to use as a bottle stopper/lid. Any suggestions?
ReplyDeleteFortunately for us, we also buy Live for Tomorrow products to clean our place with, and they are sold in Stanpac bottles as well, so have the same sized lids. So we just use those. I imagine that if you don't have access to other lids that would fit, you could use the bottles to store rice and other grains (maybe sugar and other things as well) and use Saran Wrap with a rubber band to close them up. That's the only thing I can think of, you could cover it first with Saran Wrap and then cover it again with a cute square of fabric if you want to dress it up a bit...
ReplyDeleteJaime