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Bringing your own containers to the grocery?


Marmish

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I randomly ran across this article about bringing your own containers to the grocery for bulk items which they also extend to deli and meats.

From the article: "Mesh bags for produce: They’re cheap and can go in the laundry. . .

Cloth bags for dry bulk items. . .

Glass jars and bottles for wet items: These are for foods like meat, fish, cheese, honey, and peanut butter, and for liquids like vinegar and oil. “Get a supply of glass canning jars in different sizes from the hardware store,” recommends Myscha Theriault, coauthor of 10,001 Ways to Live Large on a Small Budget."

Now, I have cloth bags, and somewhere around here there's some organza to sew up for produce bags, but bringing your own jars and other containers for bulk items? Do you do this? Would you?

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I'm not organized enough to do this. I carry cloth bags with me at all times (they fold up tiny and fit easily in my purse, and I picked up about 10 of them just before Christmas), but I generally just swing by the grocery store on my way home from work, so it's pretty spur of the moment. And even if I do know that I'll be picking up groceries on my way home on a given day, I am NOT going to be carrying around glass jars with me all day beforehand. Sorry.

I'm gonna go bake something…

wanna come with?

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I know several people who probably would take their own glass containers to the grocery. But not me; too heavy, and high risk of breakage. It's rather a challenge for me to remember to take enough reusable carry bags to the shop. And honestly, I use the bags to take out the trash.

Karen Dar Woon

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At our local bulk food store, you are encouraged to bring your own plastic containers...as in empty yogurt containers which all weigh about the same amount. Otherwise they add a small amount to the bill. We never remember to bring back the empty containers and so always have to pay. Shame. Shame. :sad:

However, we do bring empty Rubbermaid containers into regular grocery stores in which to pack all our groceries. For one thing, we travel with two large dogs who are very inquisitive and always on the lookout for a good thing. Yes, there are lids which fit tightly.

Or we simply replace all the groceries into the cart, wheel it out to the parking lot and then pack into the containers which we have forgotten to bring into the store.

Darienne

 

learn, learn, learn...

 

We live in hope. 

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I know several people who probably would take their own glass containers to the grocery. But not me; too heavy, and high risk of breakage. It's rather a challenge for me to remember to take enough reusable carry bags to the shop. And honestly, I use the bags to take out the trash.

I'm the same way. I have half a dozen or so reusable grocery bages that I have picked up at various stores for $0.99 here and $0.99 there. Even if I did remember them, I'd feel kind of funny handing them a shopping bag that says VONS in big red letter at Ralph's or Whole Foods.

And I use the plastic bags for the trash too :unsure:

"...which usually means underflavored, undersalted modern French cooking hidden under edible flowers and Mexican fruits."

- Jeffrey Steingarten, in reference to "California Cuisine".

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I'm the same way. I have half a dozen or so reusable grocery bages that I have picked up at various stores for $0.99 here and $0.99 there. Even if I did remember them, I'd feel kind of funny handing them a shopping bag that says VONS in big red letter at Ralph's or Whole Foods.

And I use the plastic bags for the trash too

There are cloth bags that roll up and snap so they are very compact when not in use; I have a number of these. Here's an example! No advertising or logos and MUCH stronger than plastic :wub:

I use the few plastic bags I get that do NOT have holes or tears for trash; most are returned for recycling.

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Even if I did remember them, I'd feel kind of funny handing them a shopping bag that says VONS in big red letter at Ralph's or Whole Foods.

I, on the other hand, don't care about the branding on the bag.

Karen Dar Woon

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Every bulk section I know sells by weight and they provide their own, lightweight containers. If you brought a glass jar of uncalibrated weight in, wouldn't you just be paying extra?

Almost any scale should have a tare function, so I wouldn't think that it would be an issue.

Martin Mallet

<i>Poor but not starving student</i>

www.malletoyster.com

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I bring jars back to my local co-op for soap, honey, molasses, etc.

I bring tins back to the same co-op for pasta, rice, and cereals. There is a scale there for tare weighing. If no one is waiting than weighing our food is a high point in the day for my kid.

I always have my bags in the car. I have them color coded. Black for chemicals, blue for stuff that needs to go in the freezer RIGHT NOW, gree for produce I don't want squashed.

I have learned to bring small boxes, plastic or otherwise, to the farmer's market so stuff doesn't get squished in my basket. I dump the produce in the box and give the farmer their's back. I don't bring glass to the farmer's market, except to return the honey man's jar when I've bought the honey from him instead of the co-op. It's crowded and too hard to juggle stuff since I am also wrangling my Wild Child, basket, coffee, an really need a free hand for samples. :raz:

That's me. I no longer choose to give my husband grief over the fact that he brings the shopping home in plastic bags even if the cloth ones are in the car, because he shops so rarely, and they are perfect for putting dirty stuff in when we're out in the car (soaking wet shoes, the towel I wiped the dog off with, etc).

I figure it all evens out in the end, maybe it tips toward good, and frankly, I think we're past the environmental tipping point already.

“Don't kid yourself, Jimmy. If a cow ever got the chance, he'd eat you and everyone you care about!”
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Every bulk section I know sells by weight and they provide their own, lightweight containers. If you brought a glass jar of uncalibrated weight in, wouldn't you just be paying extra?

Almost any scale should have a tare function, so I wouldn't think that it would be an issue.

The problem is he put the items in the jar in the bulk food department then they weigh the product at the checkout. Any of the scales I've seen do not have a way for the cashier to manually enter the tare weight and they cannot memorize the tare weights if you weighed the container on the way in. This may only work in the deli section where they could preweight the container and tare it out.

I've learned that artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

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At my co-op they will weigh your jars on the way in, mark with a waxy pencil on the lid and deduct that on the way out. The marks stay pretty well and I used the same "honey" jar for a long time. Same for peanut butter. The locking top containers are good for such things. Can't see it working in a supermarket though.

The co-op gives back 5 cents for each of your own bag you use...a la Whole Foods. Took a long time to train myself to bring bags IN TO store to use them. Sometimes I "need" garbage bags, and sometimes I get paper ones for my paper recycling.

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I often bring my own container in for bulk items- spices and grains- into my local Whole foods or coop. They just use a sharpie to put the tare weight on the lid. The mark will last for years. Really helps to cut down on the amount of trash I generate.

For bags most place generally give a discount for bring ing your own bags. Even those that do not give a discount give extra customer loyalty reward points

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We have to pack our own groceries, so I just put everything in the cart as is (very quick) and then by my car, bag it all into my "green" bags-made of that weird material. Of course, if I remember to take my bags out in the beginning-which is rare-then I bag inside the store. Fresh vegies are a problem due to weighing in at the cashiers so I do nylon bag them.

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Don't know what it's like in the rest of Canada, or even the rest of B.C., but out here on the Left Coast, we get a credit at many groceries for bringing your own bags and charged if we forget and need plastic or paper. Nobody cares whose logo is on the bag ... but you might be scolded if it's dirty. (Walmart bags are stiffer plastic and white inside, so grime shows.) But now it seems those cloth-like bags which are the most common might not be so green after all, since they are made of plastic and don't degrade very well. I don't see many people bringing their own containers to the bulk bins, but I don't shop bulk very much anymore since I don't have the bakery and even then it was weigh-at-the-checkout sort of stuff..

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I rarely shop at Whole Foods because it's so expensive, but this past week I did and forgot to bring my cloth bags in, so I ended up taking their paper bags for my groceries. Then on the way out I noticed a sign that said customers could not use any bags of any kind that weren't the Whole Foods bags -- either cloth or paper. Something to do with shoplifting. That really put me off. It's a good thing I didn't see any such sign at the cash register because I might have argued about it. :hmmm:

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I wonder if there are any cross contamination or Health Dept concerns when using/reusing containers like this. I know The Spice House in Milwaukee cannot refill spice jars at their store due to local codes.

Edited by DanM (log)

"Salt is born of the purest of parents: the sun and the sea." --Pythagoras.

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Every bulk section I know sells by weight and they provide their own, lightweight containers. If you brought a glass jar of uncalibrated weight in, wouldn't you just be paying extra?

Almost any scale should have a tare function, so I wouldn't think that it would be an issue.

Yeah, but not all have a manual tare function. It could be a problem at a busy counter because other workers would not be able to use the scale in the time between when the person serving you sets the tare on your empty jar and then weighs the full jar.

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The problem is he put the items in the jar in the bulk food department then they weigh the product at the checkout. Any of the scales I've seen do not have a way for the cashier to manually enter the tare weight and they cannot memorize the tare weights if you weighed the container on the way in. This may only work in the deli section where they could preweight the container and tare it out.

Mamy of the local stores will weigh your container on the way in and note the weight on the container.

 ... Shel


 

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I rarely shop at Whole Foods because it's so expensive, but this past week I did and forgot to bring my cloth bags in, so I ended up taking their paper bags for my groceries. Then on the way out I noticed a sign that said customers could not use any bags of any kind that weren't the Whole Foods bags -- either cloth or paper. Something to do with shoplifting. That really put me off. It's a good thing I didn't see any such sign at the cash register because I might have argued about it. :hmmm:

Here in Berkeley the customrs are encouraged to bring their own bags, whether paper, plastic, or cloth, regardless of what name may be printed on them. Many stores offer discounts of up to ten cents per bag for every bag that you supply. People use randomly branded bags at all the stores with no hassle.

 ... Shel


 

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