An Alternative To Plastic Fruit And Veg Bags

Photo from Down to Earth blog. Check out the post for more ideas on reducing waste.

Continuing with the ‘ditch the plastic bag’ theme, I wanted to look at an alternative to plastic fruit and veg bags. These are the ones that the supermarket provides ‘complimentary’ for putting in loose fruit and veg items.

We get a couple of these plastic bags as I use them for freezing meat portions in (still looking for a better alternative– any ideas?), but generally I just buy my f&V loose and ignore the checkout operator’s frowns as I hand them over for weighing (brushed spuds never go down well).

It comes down to the whole bag inside a bag thing again. We get these plastic fruit and veg bags to hold our apples or whatever in, put them in plastic shopping bags, then often people just throw them out as soon as they get home.

Of course, if you’re buying a whole lot of one item (nuts for example!), it can be inconvenient handing them all over to the checkout operator to weigh. So an excellent alternative that I got from the Down To EarthBlog is homemade, lightweight, see-through, reusable net bags (pictured above).

These involve just a little bit of netting and a straight stitch and as in the pic, maybe a little ribbon to tie them. I think it’s an awesome idea.

If you’re not into sewing, an alternative is to to hold onto your nylon mesh bags that onions and other fruit and veg come in and reuse these instead.

There are plenty of ways in which we can reduce our plastic consumption without a whole lot of effort. And these small changes add up.

I love the idea of compounding. If one household reduces their plastic consumption by 50% then imagine the difference that household is making over the course of a life time. What if 1,000 households reduced their consumption by 50%? Then times that by 30 odd years. What about 100,000 households over a 30 year period? Imagine the amount of waste 100,000 or more households will throw into landfill over the next 30 years if they don’t reduce their waste? Is this amount going to be sustainable? I really don’t think so.

100,000 households is just you and me and a few other individuals. Small changes make a big difference because of the compounding effect. Every single person’s contribution is absolutely necessary.