When I started the compact I decided to give up all take out meals and bottled drinks because I figured, as a rule, packaging was bulkier and more wasteful for carryout items, especially since many carryout meals are packaged in multiple or bulky containers even if you skip the wad of napkins and plastic utensils. But since I have started to pay closer attention to food packaging, I'm not sure that's a logical place to draw the line.
I have always stayed away from over-packaged grocery store items, like some dried soups that come in plastic bowls, shrink wrapped, and then wrapped in cardboard. And those little individual packages of raisins. But what about 6-ounce yogurt containers? And boxes of cookies with the plastic insert tray?
At the taco place near my office, you can get a to-go burrito wrapped in a square piece of tin foil (when you ask for no bag & no napkins), and at the deli around the corner, I can carry out a sandwich wrapped in a piece of deli tissue. I can’t imagine packaging any lighter than that. And restaurants (though no doubt wasteful in many ways) do order food in bulk.
I occasionally peruse the bulk section at the grocery store but today I took a close look. Dried fruit, cookies, nuts, cereal, flour, sugar, couscous, rice… these are all things I plan to start buying in bulk.
An interesting side note, Walmart is putting pressure on its vendors— 66,000 of them—to reduce the amount of packaging they use and has promised to become “packaging neutral” by 2025. Here is the link, from the NY Times published May 12, 2007.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/business/12package.html
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