Day 1: Vegetable curry with carrots, potatoes, and chickpeas served over rice
Day 2: Unstuffed cabbage, Pumpkin date muffins
Day 3: Homemade pizza, Orange slices
Day 4: Pork chops with apples, Basic baked squash
Day 5: Squash pancakes with maple butter, Frozen fruit smoothie
Day 6: Tuna salad with carrot and radish sticks, Apple slices
Day 7: Whole roasted chicken, Maple glazed parsnips, carrots, and sweet potatoes
Notes: The Return of Reusable Bags
I’m celebrating this week! I am absolutely overjoyed that my favorite grocery store is again allowing reusable produce bags. Shopping bags at the checkout have been allowed for about a month now, but recently the store has started to let us bring our own produce bags too. We’ve known for awhile that fomite transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is quite low, so this move makes a whole lot of sense. Things are ever so slowly returning to normal. Its the small things in life for me!
A quick reminder why I am not a fan of using plastic produce bags (or any other disposable grocery bags for that matter) – we are now at 100 BILLION plastic shopping bags used in the United States every year. That works out to be about 1500 per family. Astounding!
Now you may have heard that high density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic bags (aka the typical thin plastic grocery bags) are actually more environmentally friendly than reusable bags. This stems from a UK study that showed reusable cotton bags require more carbon and water to produce than plastic bags and you would have to use a cotton bag 131 times to break even compared to using plastic bags. Plastic and oil companies love to quote this study.
However, the study only addressed production, and admits it did not consider the environmental effects of littering. The authors reported that only about 1% of HDPE plastic bags are recycled and 40% are used one more time before disposal, usually as a trash can liner. That means the majority end up in the landfill, the ocean, or flying in the tree branches in your neighborhood where they never fully biodegrade, but rather break down to microplastics that harm the environment. I feel this is so disrespectful to other animals and our planet.
One point from the study that does not get a lot of attention is that reusable bags can be made from many materials other than cotton. Cotton is notorious for its high water and pesticide use in production. But there are so many other options that are more sustainable like bamboo, hemp, or recycled plastic. In fact, the UK study shows that a bag made from non-woven polypropylene plastic (you know the ones that are given out as freebies all the time) only needs to be used 11 times to match the environmental impact to produce HDPE plastic bags. I don’t know about you, but I use my bags a LOT so it would only take me a couple of weeks to reach that many uses.
The best choice? Reuse any type bag you already have at home or buy second hand bags, preferably made of a biodegradable material. Use them for produce, bagging groceries, other shopping, transporting goods, etc, etc, etc. Then use them over and over until you can’t use them anymore. That solves both the energy production problem of using a new bag and the issue of polluting the environment with plastic bags at their end of life. Saves you money too!
Cooking Tip: One last comment this week – to make meal prep easier, bake all of your squash at once and save what you need to make the pancakes the next day. You can also prep carrots, parsnips, radishes, and cabbage when you have free time. Simply store in an airtight container with a bit of cold water in the bottom and they will last up to a week in the refrigerator.
