If you've ever perused the r/Anticonsumption subreddit, you know some of the ridiculous things you can find there. But even we can't believe a recent post where a Redditor shared a picture of a plastic container of loose sprinkles.
"It's a plastic box. Of loose sprinkles. For a dollar," the post explains, accompanying a picture of just that.
Aside from being a wildly un-useful way to package or store sprinkles, this type of single-use plastic has a big impact on the environment.
In the U.S. alone, about 40 million of plastic gets thrown away each year. Once in our landfills — or worse, out in nature — these plastic containers can take hundreds of years to break down.
"Plastic packaging should be taxed at like $100 per pound," one person wrote. "Make the ones wasting s*** pay the long term 10,000 year costs of it."
Additionally, heat and erosion can cause plastics to turn into microplastics, or small beads of plastic roughly the size of sesame seeds, that are extremely difficult to remove from the environment.
"Please be joking," one person commented when another asked how else the store was supposed to package the items. "You can't think this is the best way to package sprinkles. My god."
Another added, "It is absurd. The sustainability nonprofits should be inspecting and writing up all the major supermarket chains regarding the amount of merchandising that uses single-use packaging."
While seeing packaging like this is just downright depressing, there are lots of ways for us to avoid these wasteful tactics.
"This is why I love Bulk Barn," one person commented, referencing the Canadian bulk grocery store.
Bulk stores not only cut down on the packaging needed for the goods they sell, but some even let shoppers bring in their own refillable containers to carry their groceries home in. Shopping methods like this are a great way to reduce our single-use plastic consumption.
And those aren't the only benefits of bulk-buying. Because you can choose as little or as much food as you need in bulk stores, you're more likely to cut down on food waste (and money waste).
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