For this week’s installment in the saving the environment with minimal personal effort or expense series, it’s time to talk about one of my favourite issues: packaging and containers! Packaging, as we all know, eats up tremendous amounts of natural resources. A surprising amount of packaging is not recyclable, and even when it is, it’s still pretty darn wasteful.

Fortunately, there are lots of ways to make packaging go further. In addition to, you know, helping the planet and stuff, some of the things discussed in this entry will also reduce clutter around the house and save money, which makes them even more awesome. Yay! Awesome!

Reusing bags is perhaps one of the easiest and best things you can do. I have a couple of sturdy grocery bags made from recycled Pete-knows-what, and they are insanely strong; I routinely use them to haul 40 pounds of cat litter home from the feed store. Most grocery stores offer a bag credit to people who bring their own bags, and reusing your own bags also means that you won’t end up with a crazy buildup of grocery bags rattling around the corners of the house. Hooray!

You can also reuse the bags you use for produce and other goods. I generally avoid bags when possible, and I try to wash out and re-use produce bags as much as I can. Just because you carried snow peas in a bag last week doesn’t mean you can’t rinse it, hang it to dry, and use it to transport cherries this week. When the bags finally start to shred, then you can bring them to a plastic bag collection site; most stores have them.

Furthermore, why stop with bags? Consider purchasing stuff in bulk and re-using containers, too. All of my soaps and bath supplies, for example, are purchased in bulk and pumped directly into containers I bring from home. You can also get things like rice, beans, nuts, dried fruit, candy, and so forth in bulk. Bulk foods are typically cheaper and way more fresh than packaged goods, and the selection is comparable (if not better than) the array on the shelf. In the case of bulk foods, make sure to get a tare weight for the container you use, so that you aren’t charged for the weight of the container along with the food; if your grocer doesn’t have an honor-system for tare weights, bring along an empty version of the container for the checker to weigh to determine the tare.

You can also expand your personal war on packaging a bit, if you feel like it. For example, you can stop purchasing packaged foods which are easy enough to make from scratch, like cookies, breads, sauces, and so forth. Home-made foods are cheaper, and I think they taste better. In addition, you can control the ingredients much more easily to create the flavor you like, or to avoid things you are allergic to. When you get in the habit of making things like pasta sauce in huge bulk batches, it’s not that big a deal, and I suspect that within a few months, you’ll be turning up your nose at the packaged stuff anyway.

For tea drinkers, consider giving up teabags. In addition to just being lame, teabags waste a lot of packaging. Once you get hooked on looseleaf, you won’t want to go back.

In short, avoid commercial packaging as much as possible, and reuse the bags and containers you have until they fall apart. This isn’t that hard to do, and it makes a pretty major difference. Like some of the other environmentally-friendly things I’ve recommended, bringing your own bags/containers/etc also saves you money, which is, you know, always a good thing. In most of the world, the practice of conserving containers and bags is routine, so why not join the club?