A Sustainability Check for Your Food Storage Containers!
After a year where we witnessed devastating results of climate change -- heartbreaking wildfires that raged from Australia to California, droughts, floods, rising temperatures, and melting ice caps – it’s easy to feel hopeless about our power as individuals to make change. But here we are in 2021 and many people, who maybe haven’t been as aware of the issue nor inclined to take action, are aware and wondering what they can do. First: Read Jane Fonda’s book, What Can I Do? and second: check your glassware to ensure its sustainable (Frego can help!)
When it comes to glassware or any product you’re purchasing, rest assured consumer buying decisions can have a huge impact on the environment. It’s important to make the right decisions and buy sustainably, but don’t let that overwhelm you. Get started, learn, ask questions, talk with other sustainable shoppers and do your research.
Many products claim eco-friendliness on a label, but when you dig deeper, that claim doesn’t really hold up. Consumers have to research a lot of different criteria and aspects of a product or service to make meaningful and informed decisions. The good news is that with the rise of conscious consumerism and transparency in company goods and services – whether it comes from an ethical company who proactively shares information or from consumers who demand to know this information or take their business elsewhere – it’s easier to access data and do your research.
From Frego’s perspective, we can share insight to simplify your food storage and sustainability choices.
“The ‘greenest’ product you can buy is… nothing,” says Sarah Kaplan, a climate reporter at The Washington Post. That’s why long-lasting and recycled products are the best consumer decisions for the environment. Thus, one of the most important things to avoid is plastic.
Plastic containers have to be replaced often. They stain easily, the lids and containers crack, and often times they retain odors from foods they’ve stored even after washing, which is an indicator that they have become porous. Essentially this means that over time, and especially when being subjected to heat, your plastic containers can become a welcome home to a whole host of bacteria. Eventually the safest thing to do is simply discard your plastic containers. This waste contributes to the already massive amounts of plastic endangering ecosystems while taking 1000 years to decompose! And note that recycling plastics is another struggle as a lot of plastic waste isn’t accepted by curbside recycling.
Long story short: Buying glass over plastic is a super easy first choice in buying sustainable and healthy! Now that we’ve established that truth the next inevitable question is: “which glass?” Some glassware companies today are using borosilicate glass for their products (like Frego) because of its sturdiness and ability to withstand high temperatures. It cleanly cracks versus shattering if it ever breaks. Alternatively, many companies, often larger companies, are using a lower-cost glass like soda-lime glass. Given that glass can last almost indefinitely according to Epicurious and is for many reasons the leading food storage container choice, the more important aspect becomes: is the company you plan to purchase glassware from practicing sustainability across the board?
Often times larger food storage companies are owned by massive corporations that produce several other brands, several of which are plasticware. Large corporations like these are lesslikely to care about the environment, and giving your money to them, even if it’s for glassware, is ultimately giving more money to dangerous waste that will be put back into fragile ecosystems. Clearly there are a multitude of things to think about when trying to make informed consumer decisions. But it’s the age of information… you got this! When in doubt, use handy apps like Think Dirty, ™ GreenChoice, ™ Giki ™ (UK) (link to these apps) to make shopping sustainably a little more simple. For food storage, buy glass and shop with smaller companies. Continue making an informed difference through sustainable shopping in 2021 – we have a great responsibility to do so!
This post was created in collaboration with Gabrielle Whitehurst and made possible through UpTurnships (link to https://www.upturnships.org), a Twin Cities organization that combines a paid internship with 110+ hours of paid business training, soft skills, networking, and coaching to a select group of motivated students who are preparing for business careers.