Re-reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma with my students and got to thinking: yeah, I can try and eat real food, not food-like substances. But I thought about another approach that might be helpful: <\/p>\n
Don’t bring anything contained in plastic into your house. <\/p>\n
For us, this would mean the following: <\/p>\n
we would have to buy our meat at a butcher so it would come wrapped in paper. Not easy but between Whole Wallet and Wegmans, we could probably do it. <\/p>\n
we would have to buy our bread at a bakery. We have two terrific bakeries within a mile of our house — Four Worlds and Metropolitan — so that’s within range. Of course, we’d have to convince our kids to eat bread with “things in it” but again, possible. <\/p>\n
fruits and vegetables are probably the easiest and the no plastic prohibition would encourage this because these can be bought loose. We love orange juice but I’m betting I could find enough juice oranges to make this work because orange juice is expensive. Or we could just buy orange juice in a glass container. <\/p>\n
pasta — harder. Almost all the pasta we buy comes in a box with a plastic sleeve. I have a pasta machine but I am not making pasta on a regular basis. Have to check the packaging next time I’m in the store — does at least one pasta company trust that people know the difference between vermicelli and spaghetti enough to have all cardboard packaging — or see if there’s a place to buy dry pasta (I don’t think our local coop has enough dry pasta to pull this off) We could buy rice in big sacks — do those sacks have a big of plastic in them — so that’s within range. <\/p>\n
Then we’re left with all the snack foods — pretzels, dried bagel chips, chips, granola bars — which we could certainly, certainly live without. Some, like granola bars and bagel chips, I could make with enough free time. And none of these foods are necessary. <\/p>\n
Not only would this approach help with eating, it would address our trash each week. Even after recycling and composting, we still have a single garbage can that we manage to fill up each week. Some of that is cat litter, some of it is wasted food that I can’t compost, but nearly all of it is non-recyclable plastic. <\/p>\n
Just an idea that I’m sure someone else had first. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Re-reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma with my students and got to thinking: yeah, I can try and eat real food, not food-like substances. But I thought about another approach that might be helpful: Don’t bring anything contained in plastic into your house. For us, this would mean the following: we would have to buy our meat … Continue reading Plastic and eating<\/span>