Most people are aware that shopping in bulk is a great money saver but did you know that shopping in bulk is a green choice too? I use the term bulk food shopping to refer to buying goods from bulk bins at the store or in bulk packages. Shopping in bulk is a eco-friendly choice because it conserves energy in many ways. Learn all the advantages of buying in bulk here.
Bulk Food Shopping Saves Money, Conserves Energy And Reduces Waste
Here are all the reasons you need to create a natural and organic pantry filled with eco-friendly bulk foods to feed your family. Buying in bulk reduces the amount of packaging used for those goods resulting in less packaging waste in landfills as well as saving the water and energy used to produce the extra packaging.
According to the ACEEE, “Freight trucks are responsible for almost 20% of all transportation-related fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.” Bulk food shopping helps reduce transportation inefficiency. Items packaged for bulk sale have less packaging and take up less space so they can be transported more efficiently which means less trips and less fuel to carry the weight of the extra packaging.
Buying natural and organic bulk foods from the bulk bins provide significant benefits to the environment – chief among them being a substantial amount of packaging waste diverted from landfills. Bulk foods also decrease emissions because the transportation of bulk product to retailers is efficient as it can be packed more densely on a truck. But that’s not all. Organic bulk foods on average cost 89% less than their packaged counterparts!
Where To Buy Bulk Foods:
Many health food stores have bulk aisles where you can load up things like oatmeal, grains, nuts, and even snack foods. While most conventional grocery stores don’t have large bulk sections, you can usually find at least a bulk coffee bean section.
When the bulk bins purchasing options are limited, go for large bulk bags. Instead of individually wrapped servings up chips that are then packaged again, get the “party sized” bag of chips and use bulk food storage containers such as jars or canister to store them. Then use small reusable containers to pack your food to go.
Another innovation that I have noticed is that some products are being concentrated so that you get all the same benefits of buying in bulk- reduced packaging waste and energy consumption as well as reduced freight weight and space.
You can also try bulk food shopping online with my affiliate links to retailers like iHerb and Amazon.
So get ready to love bulk foods! It is one of the easy ways to go green every day of the year. What products do you buy in bulk? Have you considered asking your grocer to carry more bulk items?
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I’m all for doing this! I wish more grocery stores had bigger bulk sections though.
The garden shop I went to, to get some information on my soil type, had bulk garden seeds. It was wonderful, they weren’t hidden inside little paper packages where you couldn’t see if they looked like strong healthy seeds or not. You could tell what they looked like. Then they were put inside of a small, not bleached paper towel and folded in the little towels. The little paper towel was then safe to put in the ground as compost because it doesn’t have any inks, or bleaches in it.