Cutting Out Plastic with Reusable Produce Bags
Cutting Out Plastic with Reusable Produce Bags
Recently, I saw these reusable produce bags at my local grocery store, and I was intrigued. I’ve been trying to cut down on single-use plastics wherever and whenever I can. For some reason, I didn’t buy them at the time, and then the next time I stopped in and decided to buy them, they had disappeared. Luckily, they showed up again a few weeks later and I snapped up a pack.
The Benefits of Reusable Mesh Bags
First of all, the main benefit to using any kind of reusable bag is that you’re wasting fewer resources by needing new plastic bags every time you go to the store, and that is why many of us are choosing to switch to reusable bags.
But another myth of plastic bags is that they keep your produce fresh. The opposite is actually true. Have you ever noticed how quickly your fruits and vegetables seem to go bad? Particularly if your grocery store periodically sprays its produce with water to keep it “fresh,” and you bring that dripping wet lettuce home in a plastic bag, the bag does not breathe and the lettuce just sits in that water and rots very quickly. Breathable mesh bags will actually keep your produce fresher longer.
Where to Buy
This particular brand of reusable produce bags that was for sale at my local grocery came in a pack of 2 small bags and 2 large bags. I thought that would be enough, but quickly realized the next time I returned to the store that since a couple of the bags I had were still in use in the refrigerator crisper, I would need more. So I bought a second pack and I now have 4 small and 4 large mesh bags, which seems to be a good number for a 2-person household.
If your local grocery doesn’t sell any reusable produce bags, there are plenty of choices available online.
The ones I use are made out of a plastic mesh with drawstrings. There are also cloth bags available that you can buy, but this is one case where I think it’s okay and maybe preferable to use plastic. I don’t know about you, but it does occasionally happen that we go to grab something in the back of the crisper and find that some forgotten onions or potatoes have turned into a disgusting, rancid soup. The plastic mesh reusable produce bags can be quickly rinsed of the funk and left to dry. I feel like the cloth ones would need a more thorough de-funkifying before I would feel comfortable reusing them.
Now the biggest challenge is just remembering to take them with us whenever we head to the store!
