Ideal for EatingEating ethically while eating great!

So we've been collecting food packaging for the past 8 days. My husband still doesn't think this looks too bad for a family of 5.

It is true that every single item is recyclable. But not every item is made of recycled materials. And I just don't know how I could reuse most of this. 

Cookie boxes? I don't know, craft projects for my 3-year-old? Maybe I should ask his school/daycare if they could use cookie, cracker and cereal boxes.

Pizza is very, very rare in our house. Hopefully we won't see another pizza box during the remaining 31 days of this exercise.

That bottle at the top left held Japanese soy sauce.

I'm not happy about the popcorn bag. We actually have a popcorn machine, and I buy popcorn kernels in bulk. But one of my daughters wanted a box of Orville Redenbacher movie theatre style popcorn. I relented and got a 10-bag box. I think she wanted several bags to take to school. She has access to a microwave in her high school break room. 

What do you do in that case? Maybe I should donate an air popper to the break room. Apparently, they stock the area with lots of single-serve items: fruit bars, granola bars, chips, bottled drinks, etc. It's a difficult situation to improve.

Even taking lunch to school or work. It's so much easier to take single-serve items. My older daughter likes to take leftovers for lunch. But she also likes those single-serve Thai Kitchen noodle lunches you see in the bathtub photo.

I remember when they first started making those boxes of single-serve chip packs. They were revolutionary! Mothers all across America rejoiced that lunch had just become easier. No  longer would they have to pull out the big bag of chips, pour a small portion into a baggie, seal the baggie then throw the baggie into the lunch bag. Now you just grabbed a bag and you were done.

Comparing those two scenarios, I can't say that the big bag of chips is the better scenario. Not only do you have the big bag, but you also have the individual baggies that you use every day. And how many people actually reuse those baggies?

Ideally, we would put the chips in a reusable container. (I guess really ideally we would chose a food that's healthier than chips!) It's easy, just not as easy as using disposable packaging.

Is it something we're willing to do?