Yikes! Lots of plastic touching our food

So how did that inventory of food related plastic turn out?

We buy lots of food wholly or partially packaged in plastic: Cereal, dried fruit, pasta, rice, legumes, bread products, crackers, chicken broth, canola oil, honey, brown sugar, maple syrup, baking powder, nuts, peanut butter, mayonnaise, ketchup, salad dressing, BBQ sauce spices, tea, mil, soy milk, nondairy spread, mustard, sun dried tomatoes, yogurt, hummus, cheese, lunch meat, meat, fish, frozen vegetables and fruit, frozen waffles and pancakes, veggie burgers, coffee, and lined cans. Toothpaste and mouthwash count too as they go in our mouth.

We store food in plastic containers, bags and wrap on serve it on plastic trays at times. We use plastic to prepare food: lettuce spinner, Teflon pans, nylon spatulas and spoons, measuring spoons and cups, whisk, pastry brush, vegetable scrubber, bowl, strainer, blender, food processor, waffle iron and ice bucket. Some of these items are rarely used or are hard plastic which I believe is less dangerous so they are low priority.

I did pull out some plastic containers that have the telltale sign of having microwaved tomato based food in them. They will be re-purposed to hold non-food items if possible and, if not, recycled.

So what is the plan? I am going to try to find substitutes for items as they are used up or in the case of plastic food storage slowly replace with non-plastic items. I started by moving three old Pyrex casseroles with lids that are never used into the food container drawer. I'm going to save a few jars to use to store items only available in plastic containers or to use for leftover food storage. I'll continue to reuse plastic produce bags and when they finally run out try to find non-plastic replacements. We do use plastic shopping bags as trash bags so I expect that will continue as will recycling what plastic we can.

First up on the research list is a glass orange juice container to replace the old plastic one.

Today's Decluttering Items
2 foreign coins worth a whole $0.08 and from an African country we never visited. Did you know you can send them to UNICEF as a donation?