this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2023
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Zero Waste

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Being "zero waste" means that we adopt steps towards reducing personal waste and minimizing our environmental impact.

Our community places a major focus on the 5 R's: refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle, and rot. We practice this by reducing consumption, choosing reusable goods, recycling, composting, and helping each other improve.

We also recognize excess CO₂, other GHG emissions, and general resource usage as waste.

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When I first began zero waste, I would either use mesh produce bags or no bag to store my produce in my refrigerator. For the most part I was able to use everything before any of it would spoil.

Since moving in with my partner, she prefers to store our produce in thick, reusable plastic bags. She likes to keep a large variety of produce on hand to encourage more variety in our diets. And so it is not as easy to consume everything before some of the produce begins to spoil. She is under the impression that plastic bags extend the shelf life of certain produce. Unfortunately the frequent cleaning & drying required to keep these plastic bags fresh can be time consuming. I’d like to simplify these processes.

appreciate any input regarding convenient ZeroWaste methods for improving produce shelf life. Do most get by fine without use of produce bags?

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[–] Cris_Color 2 points 1 year ago

I my experience, certain things like peppers really benefit from being in a plastic bag. I usually wrap those items in cloth, and then put them in a plastic bag. Same thing with cucumbers, but I put a piece of tin foil over the cut end, since I rarely use a whole cucumber quickly. I also put cut citrus in plastic bags. I will say though that it may make certain items spoil faster if you don't also wrap them in a cloth since the bag traps moisture. For some items though, if they're better sealed in some kind of vessel, you might be able to try using Tupperware as a compromise, since Tupperware/jars are much easier to wash on a regular basis.

I'm in the process of finding ways of reducing how much waste I produce myself, and am somewhat early on in the process. But plastic bags have definitely been difficult for me to cut out in some some instances. Tupperware and jars are the solution I'm trying to increasingly move over to where possible.

You may also find it useful to look into the specifically reusable bags, as those may be easier to clean and dry, or wax paper, which functionally a bit like cling wrap, and is another way of sealing things if you find a certain kinds of produce benefits from that.

You may also find it worthwhile to do some little experiments where you store some of a given kind of produce multiple ways, since that could really help inform what works best for you in the future. It would mean taking up more space, so you'd probably only wanna try one produce with two storage methods at a time, but it might yeild interesting and useful results, while also potentially reducing any social unease from not trusting that one storage method is good enough- I know for me sometimes habit or the way I'm used to doing things can be hard to break.