Since I’ve grown to love cooking so much and have taken to calling my stews my famous no-packaging vegetable stews, I invite people over more than ever. Cooking my famous no-packaging stews tastes better, is more convenient, costs less, pollutes less, and is better by nearly all my relevant values.

Read some reviews of the experience.

People who come over often feel compelled to bring something. I’ve been emailing the following message.

By the way, no need to bring anything, but if you do, I avoid packaging, so please don’t bring anything packaged—no bags, bottles, rubber bands, cans, etc. That usually means fresh fruit or vegetables carried in bags you brought to the store, but as I said, bringing nothing is fine. Here’s some background: Avoiding Food Packaging, plus links within.

I’m trying to reduce this outcome: Scientists Find Most Trashed Spot on Earth: A Once-Pristine Paradise.

My goal is to prompt a new experience I think people will like: to (re)discover fresh fruits and vegetables free of plastic and otherwise unmolested by industry. If it feels onerous, I prefer nothing to packaging. I try to be polite and not presumptuous.

Sadly, people still bring packaging. Sunday evening a friend who had a backpack with him in the store bought a new canvas bag to carry three bundles of kale, despite my sending the above message.

I don’t understand what it takes for people to stop using unnecessary packaging. Stores will keep providing it as long as people accept it.

Most of this beach is covered with food containers that people probably fantasized they’d reuse or recycle. Not one was necessary. That’s where packaging goes—yours, mine, everyone’s. Who knows, maybe one of the containers is one you paid for.

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