I’ve been avoiding buying food with any packaging. I started April 20. I updated my progress with pictures in “Buying no food with packaging, eighteen days and counting“.

Saturday evening I bought some onions in one of those net bags. Onions make you cry. Today I’m scheduled to get a shipment of vegetables from my farm share and that comes in a box so the experiment would have ended today had I not bought the onions in the bag. Still, I could have bought loose onions to avoid polluting the plastic bag.

In the meantime I’ve

• Produced almost no trash or recycling
• Eaten a higher ratio of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes than ever
  • Probably fiber too, in particular
• Spent as little on food as I can remember
• Spent less time preparing food than usual
• Talked to my produce vendor guy
• Shared my plan with friends and colleagues, who all supported the experiment
• Got a bunch of free fruits and vegetables that people didn’t eat at events
• And more…

After finding eating closer to the source easier than I expected, I expect I’ll eat that way more in the long term.

I recommend trying the experiment yourself. What do you have to lose?

Good luck!

EDIT: Here’s a story a friend wrote about “Berlin duo launch a supermarket with no packaging.” I’m glad to see a community already doing what I’m experimenting with and the media reporting it. Humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years without packaging. I’m sure we can keep doing it, even if it’s more profitable to refine and package.

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