Day 49 of 365 Days Of Low Carbon Living.
When you buy bread, does it come wrapped in a plastic bag?
For most of us, these days the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, those plastic bread bags are contributing to three big problems:
- the huge amounts of plastic ‘waste’ that is polluting our common home and all who live here (including we humans)
- pollution created when plastic is made
- damage to our climate, from the extraction and transport of the fossil gas and oil that is used to make most plastic
Yes, we can recycle plastic bags – if we have access to a collection point. Some bread manufacturers are even encouraging people to recycle their bags, even if the message is rather discreet.
Yet that is not dealing with the plastic problem. The plastic bags can only be recycled into other, hard plastic products. They cannot be recycled into new plastic bags. And, in the end, it is still plastic.
The solution to the plastic problem is to stop creating it in the first place. Yes, that means avoiding plastic in the first place.
When it comes to food like bread, that’s pretty easy:
Simply buy fresh bread that comes in either paper bags or no bags.
Why buy bread without plastic packaging
Buying fresh bread in paper bags or no bags eliminates your plastic wrapping ‘waste’ from shop-bought bread and helps support local businesses.
Plastic is not found in nature. It has been developed and created by humans in the last few decades.
Plastic also persists for a very long time. When you hear that it breaks down, that usually means that it breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. Plastic is now found almost everywhere in the world – even in our food.
As well, almost all plastic is made from coal or fossil gas or oil – and they all cause their own problems as well as the problems from plastic. For example:
- To get coal or fossil gas or oil out of the ground, local environments are destroyed, streams and ground water is depleted or polluted, and air is polluted. This is particularly the case for open cut coal mines and unconventional gas wells. Oil spills and seismic testing for oil under the sea also destroy marine wildlife. Apart from the damage to the natural world, people’s health and livelihoods suffer.
- Creation of plastics (especially from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal) creates pollutants.
- When fossil gas is extracted and transmitted in pipelines, it leaks and damages our climate.
How to buy bread without plastic packaging
The first step is looking for bread that is ‘naked’ or sold in paper. Once this was the only way to buy bread. Now, however, it has become the norm for bread to be supplied in plastic bags. Even many bakeries that make bread on their own premises and display their breads bare put the bread in a plastic bag for you to take home.
Interestingly, plastic wrapping seems to be less likely for long breads like baguettes or batards – a good point for supporting requests for bread without plastic.
Next is to buy bread without plastic packaging. In other words, putting your money where your mouth is. That’s the market at work – a very effective way of getting messages to businesses.
If the bread isn’t quite to your liking, politely tell the bake or shopkeeper exactly what the problem is and what you would like. That helps build your relationship with them and improve their offerings – something that is much harder to do with industrial bakeries. On the odd occasion that I have had a problem with bread I have bought direct from the baker at my local farmers market, they have expressed their appreciation for my feedback, apologised and given me another loaf for free. That’s because they want to keep me as a customer.
For buying bread without packaging (if you can), I find it helps to take along your own clean and dry packaging to use. Try a cloth bag, cloth (a tea towel may do), large paper bag (say from a previous bread or ‘fast food’ purchase) or plastic bread bag (from when you have bought bread in plastic wrapping!)
How to store bread that comes without plastic packaging
What happens if we don’t eat all the delicious fresh bread the same day?
If I need to store the bread, I find that keeping it in a clean and dry container or plastic bag – in a cool place – helps prevent it drying out.
Storing the bread in the freezer helps prevent it going mouldy too – and slicing it before freezing makes it easy to use only a slice or two at a time.
The challenge
Support bread being supplied without plastic packaging by:
- Find a local baker or supermarket that sells bread without packaging or in paper packaging – and buy that bread.
- Take your own clean cloth or paper bags with you when you go shopping for bread.
- Get to know your local bread supplier. Talk with them about their bread and how you are trying to reduce plastic.
Join me!
Any change or challenge is easier if you have company along the way.
So let’s embark on this journey together.
- Read my blog every day for ideas, thoughts and experiences for living a lower carbon lifestyle, more in harmony with nature – while also adapting to the consequences of our damaged climate.
- Subscribe to get posts direct to your inbox.
- Commit to taking action yourself.
- Add a comment to let me know you’re joining in the effort to turn around our world so it can remain liveable – and what your experiences are.