During the early months of 2019 we’ve been working hard to make our grocery shopping habits much more sustainable. It’s a slow process but we’re excited about the progress that we’ve made. I wish we would have taken a picture a few months ago, because then we could really have a drastic before-and-after photo 🙂

In the photo above you can see this week’s worth of groceries broken into three categories. From left to right we have: 1) items that are sustainably packaged that we’ve been buying for years, 2) items that we’ve recently learned how to buy without plastic packaging, and 3) items that have plastic packaging and we’re still buying them.

Our overarching goal for grocery shopping is to buy healthy foods that come with as little plastic packaging as possible. Glass and cardboard containers are great, and what’s even better is no container at all! Buying in bulk at Sprouts has been a game changer for us. We’re able to get lots of dry goods in bulk using our own re-usable containers, and many of their produce items have a packaging-free option too. Don’t get me wrong, there’s still TONS of plastic packaging in Sprouts. It takes some mindful shopping to achieve our goals, but we’re certainly doing much better than we were few months ago.

The items that are pictured on the far right are some of the foods that we’re struggling to find without plastic packaging: greek yogurt, almond milk, tortillas, cereal, roasted corn, and bananas (there’s a bit of plastic on the top of the bunch). This week we didn’t have to buy bread, hummus, protein powder, or cheese, but those are other common items that we haven’t found plastic free solutions for yet. Any ideas for how we can find these items without plastic packaging?

If you’re looking to start lessening the plastic waste generated by your grocery store habits, check out Litterless. She has curated an awesome list of bulk grocery stores. You can search for stores near you by State and City. Even though her list isn’t completely comprehensive, I found out about another refillery in San Diego from it. Hope you find that you have a bulk store near you!

What suggestions do you have for us to continue eliminating plastics? Every step that we take is another bit of plastic that we can keep out of our beautiful world.

xo, Nicole