Bulk Bins: If you had them, would you use them?
When I talk about buying in bulk, I’m not talking about huge containers of dried oregano from Costco or massive bags of chips. I am talking about this…
Rows of bins containing pasta, beans, grains, flour, sugar, chips, dried fruit, cereal, and sometimes tofu, peanut butter, olive oil, and personal care products like shampoo or soap, from which you can fill up your own reusable bags and containers, eliminating packaging waste. Last Week, Chicago blogger Jeanne from Life Less Plastic wrote about being envious of San Francisco Bay Area stores that provide so many of these bulk options.
But even here in the Bay Area, we could use more bulk options. Just this week, I wrote to a co-president at Whole Foods asking that they expand their bulk section to match some of the other bulk food stores in the region. (I asked, of course, for my own selfish reasons. Whole Foods is closer to me than Berkeley Bowl, the king of bulk in the East Bay.)
And then I got to thinking… if Whole Foods did expand their bulk offerings, would shoppers buy? And would they bring their own containers and bags? We have such opportunities to live with less packaging out here, and yet I still see so many customers buying their granola in boxes (with plastic inside) or choosing olives in a jar vs. the olive bar or plastic bags of dried fruit. And of the folks I see buying from the bulk bins, most are taking new plastic bags each time rather than bringing their own reusable bags or containers from home. Why is this?
Two reasons come to mind. The first is convenience. Bringing your own containers requires forethought. You have to plan your shopping trip and bring the appropriate containers with you. One woman I met at Berkeley Bowl had an ingenious system. She told me all about her “plastic bag file” in which she files her plastic bags in alphabetical order (based on what product she puts in that bag) and brings the same bags back to the store to refill with the same product each time. That way, she doesn’t have to wash them as often. For instance, why rinse out her white flour bag when she’s just going to refill it with white flour each time? I’ve started a version of this, keeping the labels on my glass jars and bringing them back for prunes, trail mix, couscous, etc.
Well, this washing or lack of washing brings me to the second reason consumers might avoid bulk bins… the perception that they are not sanitary. Some bins are located up high and have an opening on the bottom, under which you hold your bag or container to catch the food as it runs out. These are probably the most hygienic since human hands never touch the food in the bin. But the bins lower down are another matter. These are the ones where you measure out your portion with a big scoop or tongs, and into which you could stick your whole hand if you wanted to. And I think these are the ones that freak some people out.
I’m not really worried. Certainly not about food that is going to be cooked anyway. Dry pasta? Rice? Beans? Go ahead and run your grubby hands all over them. They’re going to be boiled! But what about my prunes? Not going to cook them. And not going to wash them as I would fresh produce. I guess I just choose to assume most people will be responsible, and I don’t worry about it too much. Should I? I’m not the best example of health, what with all the illnesses I’ve picked up this last winter, but I attribute those more to lack of sleep and burning the candle at both ends than buying food from bulk bins.
What do you think?
Do you have these kinds of options for buying with less packaging in your area? Have you checked to see what’s available?
If you do have some bulk bins available, do you use them? Why or why not?
If you do, do you bring your own bags or containers? Why or why not?
I’d love to be able to ask for more options in bulk, but it won’t happen if we don’t support them.
Unfortunately, an article in the LA times said an observational study of 600 people found 20% put their hands right into the bins (eeewww) which is way higher than I ever would have expected. Before reading that, I, like you, had faith in people to be reasonably hygienic. That still doesn’t totally deter me from using them, but it did bum me out.
I’ve been reducing plastic for the past few months, have been hunting out my local farmers markets and taking my own produce bags BUT here in the UK I’m struggling to find bulk bin stores like the ones you mentioned. Many years ago a local Heath food store refilled my Ecover bottles & had a few bins but sadly shut down a few years back when pound land opened up next door. Apart from going into London or starting my own I’m a bit stuck.
Cheers jules
How do you find local stores with bulk bins and eco-friendly packaging? Like you mentioned above, Chicago seems to be completely lacking in this department! I’ve found a select few stores with bulk bins of very minimal items! Please help!
What about the plastic containers that the stores are getting the bulk items in? When I was at rainbow to get a refill of apple cider vinegar I noticed the large plastic jug it came in and wondered if it wasn’t better for my health and the environment to get a smaller glass jar with a plastic cap instead. If I add those jars up the caps equal much less plastic unless the store is shipping back the plastic jugs for refills. Which seems like an expense most businesses would be unlikely to take on. Also dry goods may well be arriving in plastic bags.
Yes, it’s true that some bulk products are shipped to the store in plastic packaging. I address these issues in my book, in fact. In general, the benefit of bulk is that one large plastic bag or container uses much less plastic than several smaller ones. But you’re comparing plastic to glass, which changes the equation. From a health perspective, I would choose the glass over the plastic.
Beth, I know this post is really old, but I hope you read my comment… I have a question. If you bring your own jar to the bulk section and fill it, how do they weigh the product for purchase? I would love to take things like my spice jars in and refill them, but I am unsure how this would work. I wish they had more bulk food stores where I live (in Idaho). A couple of stores have them (two that I know of), and although one has good prices, the other one’s prices are crazy high and way more than their prepackaged counterpart.
Amanda
Hi Amanda. It depends on the store. For example, out here, Whole Foods has you take your containers to the customer service desk to have them weighed before you fill them up. Then, the cashier deducts the weight of the container at the checkout. But other stores let you weigh your own containers and they will deduct the weight. The best thing to do is to ask a store employee when you first arrive, and they will let you know how they handle “tare weights” at that store. I have a whole section on bulk bins and how they work in my upcoming book. 🙂
I feel that there must be a way to reduce the risk of cross-contamination in bulk food stores and introducing standards for storage (which hopefully does not involve plastic) . If they can do it for plastic packaging when they’re packaging different things in large factories(food must come in bulk in the first place from somewhere, unless there were some plastic-bearing grain or plants that I’m not aware of), they must be able to do it in grocery stores. (Then again, most things are cross-contaminated with allergens even in plastic packaging–Most foods have labels that indicate that they may not be safe for peanut/wheat allergies, and very few say that they are.) As for bad behavior around the bulk bins… I feel that people can learn. We have to have faith in the human capacity to learn. Instead of saying, “oh, no way,” it’s more productive to think instead, “how can we make this better?” Waste is not an issue only for bulk bin stores, all grocery stores have this problem. They have to plan ahead and figure out how much food they actually need to stock, how long they can stock them, what are the conditions required for storing them safely, and what the demands are, the same goes for restaurants, and every ounce counts. We’re not groping in the dark here. We have ALL this accumulated knowledge and science to help us make this happen.
People in America seem to feel okay with open bulk vegetable and fruit sections, even though everybody is touching them, and you don’t heat them up to eat them. (People touch peaches to see how hard and firm they are so that they can pick the ones with the desired ripeness.) Do people demand that grocery stores package every single vegetable in plastic? (Oh, I shudder at the thought of individually wrapped bananas, and peaches and cherries.) No, because they see other people doing it, and it’s the norm. And norms can change, it just depends on how you view it.
In Taiwan, housewives prefer open markets not only for fruit and vegetables but for dried noodles, meats, and prepared foods because the quality is better and you get cheaper for more, and they’re always full of people. It’s not perfect and it can benefit from more standardization (like making the floor less gross, for example) but as it is, it’s not the sanitary nightmare that people in America imagine it would be, and we do just fine. You are welcome to bring your containers, the person weighs them for you, and he or she often adds everything in the head, cross-check the amount with the customer, and the customer pays, while the other customers are free to shop around and leave their filled counters at the counter until they’re ready to pay. If you think America’s supermarkets are busy, Taiwan’s population density is way higher, and service clerks service a lot more people in a day.
Contamination (like that pig-disease scare I forgot the name of) mostly comes from upstream, when the farms mess it up with their practice of crowding too many livestocks(we have so little space in Taiwan, and landfills are overflowing, why can’t we try to free up the landfills?), and(!) in food packaging(finding bugs in the plastic), oh yea, and let’s not forget DEHP, the plasticizer that nobody knew was being added to sports drinks and fruit drinks because of the secrecy surrounding the food industry. And why were they adding them? because it was a magically cheaper alternative to another drink additive that the industry add to their packaged drinks so that fruit juices don’t have natural condensation at the bottom.
If you DON’T KNOW what to test for then you won’t find it, for each new compound you have to develop a new indicator that is reliable and shows up most of the time and can be separated from other chemicals. In our case, it took us 20 years before some sharp-eyed inspector realized there were abnormal wavelengths corresponding to the DEHP in the drinks. Usually they just run a test of known chemicals, so nobody ever found out that some OTHER thing was in there. Just imagine the amount of waste that came from taking all this food off the shelves and incinerating them. Some of the foods were innocent in the sense that it was not the manufacturers who deliberately put DEHP in them, but they had unacceptable levels of DEHP due to packaging.
Oh, yea, and it’s great that because of these food additives, people think fruit juices “naturally” come with neon red coloring and have no condensation of fruit pulps on the bottom and have to be taught to separate something that is really natural from something that has DEHP in it.
I’m all for local bulk food stores. I wish they were more widely available in the US.
Oh, and most of my grocery items are bought from the bulk isle, I always buy from there if I can. On my once a month trip I usually come out with only one (cloth) grocery bag full, it’s mostly quinoa, pasta, nuts, some spices, etc.)
I might have a bulk store “near by” but it’s long drive for me (compared to the short walk I usually take…) and it’s not in an area I ever go to on even a semi-regular basis. I’ve never been to this store so I’m not actually sure what it’s like and if it’s a bulk store like I’m looking for. I would LOVE if I had a bulk store close to me, and I would love it even more if I could take my own containers without having to pay for the weight!
Currently I shop at the vegetable store (farmers market in the summer) once a week, and the grocery store once a month or less. I always bring my own bags, I have mesh bags, nylon bags, and cotton bags depending on what I need them for. I used to just toss all my produce on the counter but it was so awkward, especially at the vegetable store, so now I use various bags.
I was delighted yesterday to find all the bulk bins at the Sprouts store and plan to start buying there. I’m very new to the program but VERY excited about it. A friend gave me a copy of Sunset magazine which had an article about Bea Johnson who has a blog called The Zero Waste Home. I’ve been obsessed with plans to live a greener lifestyle ever since and subsequently found your website too. You are an inspiration! I live with my husband and his dad and that may hold me up a little but buying most staples in bulk is one thing I’m sure I can do. Sprouts stores are springing up all over Colorado and there are two about ten miles from me. I live in a rural area so everything is a distance; I’m used to driving. I didn’t see bulk pasta there but maybe Whole Foods has it. I have a few after holiday sewing chores to finish up but then I’m off to buy muslin for making re-useable bags for the bulk flour 🙂 Happy to be on board!
If your environmentally conscious, and are searching for a larger-scale bulk container, you should look into RPP Containers. They buy your used bulk containers and container scrap, grind them down and make new, enviromentally friendly containers. Their product is called DuraGreen. I can really appreciate what they are trying to do here!
If your environmentally conscious, and are searching for a larger-scale bulk container, you should look into RPP Containers. They buy your used bulk containers and container scrap, grind them down and make new, enviromentally friendly containers. Their product is called DuraGreen. I can really appreciate what they are trying to do here!
http://www.rppcontainers.com/c/bulk-container-recycling.html or http://www.rppcontainers.com/c/used-bulk-containers.html
Oh, I most definitely would use bulk bins if I had them close-by. The only thing I can buy in bulk at a reasonable distance from my home is musli though, which I use for buying cereal, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and similar. Also many different kinds of nuts are available in bulk bins in almost every store in Sweden, as a part of “Nature’s Candy” (freely translated, probably erroneous).
I have found a small co-operative business which has several different kinds of beans, rice, quinoa and even sundried tomatoes in bulk bins. Sadly, however, this store is located quite far away from me, approximately four hours of train ride. It is closer to my sister’s home, though, and I visit it each time I visit her, stocking up on items available in bulk there. It feels as though this limits my shopping since I cannot do without immense planning, and it is fairly irritating. I have searched in vain for a store offering bulk bins and located closer to me for about six months, but I am very close to giving up.
The bulk bin way of shopping is generally considered unsanitary in Sweden, I’d say. Unfortunately. :/
I use various sizes of light cotton (gauzy cotton fabric) drawstring bags that I sewed myself and bought at our local co-op. Good for a couple of reuses with dry bulk goods and easily washable in the machine whenever necessary. Incredibly convenient–easier than bringing jars or other containers. Keep jars at home and empty cotton bags full of bulk whatever–soy beans, rice, lentils, quinoa–into them as soon as I get back from shopping. No plastic contains my food in the whole process, it feels good, it looks good (unbleached cotton bags full with beans or rice look cool, like grains and legumes in little burlap sacks) and i have nothing to throw away. Ever. Since I started not buying any food that’s in packaging and started buying only bulk and fresh food using reusable bags and containers, I’ve been learning to cook, am getting better and faster, slowly, and am enjoying the hell out of life lately.
Regarding sanitary issues, not too concerned. Sometimes I dig at the back of the bin if it seems especially well used, but I don’t buy into the market-fueled hysteria for hyper-sterilized conditions that appears especially disproportionate to the risks in this country. I wash my hands regularly and keep all my cooking and eating utensils and living conditions washed and clean, but I don’t think Purell is a necessary accoutrement to bulk bin buying. Many don’t realize that hyper-sanitary living can actually undermine the immune system which tends to weaken without occasional stimulation. There’s also a line of thought that a little bit of dirt in one’s food provides probiotic (healthy for beneficial gut bacteria) and mineral benefits most people who eat processed food don’t get anymore.
Stefan, I totally agree with you about our society’s recent germ-phobia. Children need to be exposed to a certain amount of germs for their immune systems to develop. All these toxic chemicals we are using to create sanitary conditions are poisoning our children and destroying the very mechanisms they need to fight off infection in the first place.
Also, I love how when we give up packaged, processed foods we start to eat so much more healthfully.
I am a bulk buying addict. Buying packaged good, particularly whole foods like beans or rice, seems so silly and wasteful, not to mention expensive. It’s all about branding and marketing. What I care about it good, whole foods without a lot of waste.
However, I just moved to Germany (way up north in Kiel!) and am desperately seeking bulk bins. I lived in France last year and managed to find some at a “bio” market, but here I have yet to see any. Anyone have any suggestions or know of any particular store or type of store in Germany I should look for? Or does anyone have any other ideas? I just can’t go back to packaged food… It would break my heart. 🙂
@Juli — good point! I should have clarified how I handle bag/container weight in my post. No, I do not pay for the weight of the bag or container.
My Ecobags have the “tare weight” printed on the label, so the cashier can just deduct it from the total weight. The registers at Whole Foods can do this automatically.
I bring my containers and jars to the customer service desk at Whole Foods or to the bulk desk at Berkeley Bowl and have them weighed before I fill them. Containers that I use regularly have a sticker on them with the weight so I don’t have to do it every time. Then, the cashier deducts the weight.
Different stores have different ways to do it. At Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, customers weigh their own containers and label them. It’s the honor system. The cashier will deduct whatever weight you state, I guess as long as it seems reasonable.