By Natural Stepper Kate Heiber-Cobb

How many of you buy foods and products in bulk?  My husband and I do, thanks to our membership at Willy Street Co-op for the last 32 years.  We get to use our own jars, bags, etc. to purchase not only produce, but grains, legumes, flours, cereal, culinary and medicinal herbs, snacks, nuts, honey, maple syrup, sugar, oils, eggs, coffee, p-nut butter and more.  They also offer laundry detergent, dish soap, shampoo, body lotion, facial clay and more in bulk.   They also sell re-usable cloth bags for produce shopping.  Think about how many plastic bags we use to buy our wonderful, beautiful local produce.  These bags are fairly cheap (or get some muslin and sew your own) and they are better for your produce than the plastic because they breathe.   I recently took a friend to the store and showed her around and gave her the ins and outs of shopping there.  You don’t have to have a friend to get a tour.  The store offers tours regularly and here’s a link for more info on the co-op.  http://www.willystreet.coop/

Bulk buying lets you buy the quantity you want and reuse your own containers to put it in.  The co-op also tries to offer as many local products to you as possible.  We all can get complacent about packaging now that there is curbside recycling, but it’s not sustainable.  We are generating huge quantities of recycled waste and it takes resources to pick it up and process it and of course, to produce it.   Think about all the trucks picking up all the recyclables and the fuel to run them, the emissions from them and the cost to us as taxpayers to provide that.  I’m not saying we should do away with our wonderful recycle systems, but let’s think longer and harder about how we each can reduce our waste.  Some of the ways are very easy.  Here’s one; always have a “to go” cup in your vehicle or backpack if you’re biking.  Then when you get that coffee or tea desire in the middle of your day you don’t have to use another paper cup to satisfy the desire.  Always carry your reusable shopping bags in your car in case you end up having to stop for something OR you just couldn’t resist those beautiful red peppers at the farmer’s market. 

Our own local Copps store also has a bulk section, but not as extensive and they offer no health and beauty or cleaning products bulk.  They do offer grains, nuts, snacks, p-nut butter and such.   Shoppers requesting more bulk selection may find that the store is happy for the suggestions and willing to try them.  Did you know you can recycle your plastic shopping bags at Copps?  So, all those stores that give you those bags and you’ve forgotten your own reusable bags and accepted them, can be taken to your local Copps store for recycling.  That said, don’t just think about your reusable bags just for grocery shopping.  You can use those for errand shopping, clothes shopping, the hardware store, and much more. 

Buying in bulk helps you go green because…

• It reduces the amount of waste created.
• It prevents resources from being used to create unnecessary packaging.

Packaging of all sorts makes up about one-half of all solid waste in the municipal waste stream. Although at least 28 countries currently have laws designed to encourage reduced packaging, the US is not one of them. Instead, the burden of disposing of packaging waste is left to the consumer. And though access to curbside recycling programs has increased from 30 percent to 50 percent between 1992 and 2006, recycling rates have actually dropped.[1]

In 2006, over 41 million tons of paper products were taken to landfills. In total (before recycling), paper products constituted 34 percent of the total waste stream. That same year, 27.5 million tons of plastic products, 2.6 million tons of aluminum items, and over 10.3 million tons of glass bottles, jars, and other containers were not recycled, ending up in landfills.[2]

Consider, too, that most purchases add additional package-waste by being bagged in plastic as they leave the store. A plastic bag, which takes only one second to manufacture, is used for about 20 minutes on average and then takes 100-400 years to degrade naturally. About 16,000 of these bags are distributed worldwide every second.[3]

But waste from spoiled food is also a problem. In addition to package waste, 6.7 percent of the solid waste stream comes from discarded food from commercial and residential sources.[4] In fact, if just 5 percent of all discarded food had been recovered (for composting, donations, and animal feed) in 1995, $50 million in landfill costs would have been saved.

Footnotes

1. Container Recycling Institute – Graphs: Beverage Container Statistics
2. US Environmental Protection Agency – Municipal Solid Waste Generation, Recycling, and Disposal in the United States: Facts and Figures for 2006
3. Vital Graphics – The Packaging Nightmare
4. US Environmental Protection Agency – Don’t Throw Away That Food