Kitchen

STORING FOOD WITHOUT PLASTIC

The kitchen is a vast world of its own. It is the home of the food we eat; and what we eat becomes us, so this is an important world where minimizing plastic is definitely well worth it. Here are a few suggestions on how to move your kitchen and food storage in the direction of less plastic. 

STORING YOUR FOOD WITHOUT PLASTIC

Type of food	Best option	Image
Leftovers to be re-heated in the microwave	Glass container with bamboo, stainless steel or glass lid (remove lid in microwave, unless it's glass)
Leftovers to be reheated on the stove or in the oven	Stainless steel airtight container (remove lid in oven if it has a silicone or rubber seal)
Leftover salad in salad bowl	Beeswax wrap cover
Cold food	Stainless steel container (airtight or not, depending on nature of food)
Wet food	Glass jar or stainless steel airtight container
Warm food	Stainless steel insulated thermal container
Muffins or potatoes	Glass, ceramic or stainless steel bowl with a fabric bowl cover
Food to be frozen	Stainless steel airtight container or glass jars with at least an inch for expansion
Small portions of food to be frozen (baby food, concentrated broth, herbs)	Stainless steel ice cube tray
Bread	Depending on how crunchy you like it, a bread bag might suffice or a beeswax wrap or stainless steel airtight container
Flour, grains or pasta purchased in bulk	Glass, ceramic or stainless steel airtight container
Cookies, loose leaf tea, spices	Tins, large or small	Photo Credit: Athul Krishna R Binoy

GLASS

There exist a number of plastic-free options for storing your food, but glass is the most common and the cheapest. Not only are mason jars inexpensive, but you can obtain glass jars for free just from purchasing products packaged in them at the supermarket. Food such as spaghetti sauce is often packaged in a glass jar that you can clean and reuse. Most lids that come with a glass container are made of plastic or coated with a plastic lining that may contain bisphenol A or another plastic coating; make sure you never fill up your jars to the point that food is in contact with the lid. 

Glass jars are great for storing all kinds of food: dry goods, wet food, liquids and slices of cheese . . . You can also use them safely in the freezer as long as you leave about 20 percent of extra space to allow for expansion. 

STAINLESS STEEL 

Stainless steel has emerged in recent years in North America as a superb alternative to plastic for food storage. Asian populations have known this forever. Stainless steel containers are durable, practically unbreakable, repairable, safe and, with the addition of some silicone in the grooves of their lids, they can be made airtight. And a surprising advantage of stainless steel is that it has a positive recycling value. This means that you can be paid to return stainless steel to a scrap dealer. 

When storing leftovers in a stainless steel container, it’s a good idea to identify the contents directly on the container with a Sharpie marker or a grease pencil. Markers, even the non-erasable ones, wash off easily with baking soda and a little elbow grease.  

Stainless steel containers work well in the freezer, especially with an airtight lid. The frozen food is protected against freezer burn and dehydration, and the food can be defrosted directly in the container on the stove at low heat. Jay uses large rectangular airtight containers that have a capacity of over 4 gallons (15 L) to store frozen tomatoes freshly picked up in the summer months. He then plops them whole into the spicy Indian dal he makes often in the winter. 

As well, you can use a large rectangular airtight container to store bread and pastries. The bread doesn’t dry out, and the pastries stay fresh for several days. Airtight stainless steel food containers work very well for storing certain types of produce in the refrigerator. For example, with lettuce, kale and beet greens, just add a little bit of moisture at the bottom of the container or wrap the greens in a damp cotton towel or greens bag. 

Make sure you purchase high quality, food grade 304 stainless steel of 18-8 or 18-10 quality. You may find less expensive stainless steel containers of grade 200 quality. This is a lower quality grade of stainless steel that generally does not contain any nickel, which means it is more prone to rust. When we first started Life Without Plastic, we offered some dishes and containers on our site that were made with 202 stainless steel. We were soon getting complaints from customers that patches of rust were visible after dishwashing. We quickly stopped offering these products. Even though rust is not in itself dangerous to human health, it’s not a desirable thing for a product being used for food or beverages and it may alter the taste of the food or drink.

 

FABRIC 

Fabric provides some level of insulation without being airtight. For baked goods such as cookies or muffins, an airtight container may keep them too moist and sticky on the surface when the desired texture is a bit crunchy. A cotton bowl cover on top of a ceramic bowl works perfectly. Similarly, for a baguette, a bread bag is ideal. Keep the baked goods in the fabric bag for a few days and then transfer them to an airtight container to keep them from drying out too much—there is a limit to that desired crunchiness. 

You can also use fabric bags to conserve some dry goods you’ve purchased in bulk for a short period of time (less than one month). Sugar, salt and dried beans are good candidates, as long as the pantry where they are stored is very dry.

 

BEESWAX WRAPS 

Beeswax wraps have been on the market for many years now as an eco-friendly and natural alternative to plastic cling wrap. Typically, they are made of cotton or hemp dipped in a blend of beeswax and natural oils. They smell like honey and they can be molded to the shape of a bowl with just the heat of your fingers. They are truly magical and entirely natural. 

Keep a few handy to cover leftover bowls, salads, a half-cut melon or a piece of cheese. They also work well with bread. Just make sure you do not wash them in hot water or the beeswax will melt and wash away in your sink drain. Simply wipe them clean with a damp soapy cloth or wash them in cold water with soap. Keep a few sizes handy and replace them about once a year, depending on the level of use.

STICKY PLASTIC

One last thing to say about food containers. You may think that unless your plastic containers are cracked, you can still use them for storing your food. The reality is that plastic containers continue to leach their many chemical additives all through their existence. Additives give plastic products special properties. They may include flame retardants, plasticizers, stabilizers, color pigments and lubricants. Because they are generally not chemically bound to the plastic resin, they will leach into whatever food or beverage you put in the plastic container. Plastic will even leach faster when the container is old and scratched, frequently washed in the dishwasher or washed with harsh detergents. 

Have you ever wondered why some plastic containers are sticky on the surface and no matter how hard you try, that stickiness just won’t wash away? That is the chemical additives that progressively leach and eventually appear on the surface of the plastic. If that’s the case, those are containers you want to recycle, or discard if they cannot be recycled.

 

TINS

Tins are relatively popular as ornamental gift packaging. You often see tin boxes filled with cookies around Christmas time and you might wonder how you can reuse them at home. The problem with tin containers is that they rust very easily. They should only be used for very dry food. Even cookies that are too moist can cause some rusting in the container over time. 

Use tin containers to store dry goods that you plan on consuming in the coming month or so. Tin containers are rarely airtight and the contact with air will make your flour or grains go rancid more quickly. They can work nicely for spices and loose leaf tea. Tins are also great for storing powdered cleaning products such as baking soda and borax. 

FREEZING

Freezing without plastic is straightforward: glass or stainless steel both work beautifully. Glass jars are so easy to come by in whatever size you might need. We traditionally might think of freezing as only for cooked foods such as carrot ginger soup or Cajun chili, but freezing keeps most foods fresher. 

We use mid-sized glass jars for nuts and berries, and larger jars for grains, flours, granola and muesli. We use round and rectangular stainless steel airtight containers (with silicone seals) in the same way and label them with non-permanent marker so we know what’s inside without having to open up the container. Make sure you label the container on the side facing out so you can see the label right away without having to rearrange the whole freezer to figure out the contents of a container. 

If you’re freezing a liquid, or a solid food that has a lot of liquid in it, be sure to leave some space at the top of the jar for expansion. The amount will depend on the size of the container, but generally an inch or two is plenty to avoid the container cracking or deforming from the food expanding as it freezes.

As well, you have to be careful with temperature extremes when using glass jars, as they could crack on you. Jars in which you have just put hot food should be allowed to cool to room temperature before putting them in the freezer. And similarly, you don’t want to immediately heat up frozen jars of food just removed from the freezer. 

We recommend glass or stainless steel for meats. Standard butcher paper is coated with petroleum-based paraffin wax. Some might suggest aluminum foils, but we don’t recommend them given the potential toxicity of aluminum. 

Popsicles and Ice Cubes

Stainless stainless steel popsicle molds—available with bamboo sticks and silicone gaskets—are a hardy, elegant alternative to the plastic ones that have kids licking plastic from all angles. 

Similarly, there are fine stainless steel ice cube tray options on the market. Apart from making ice cubes, this is a great way to freeze small portions of baby food, or liquid stock for cooking. Looking for larger single portions than what an ice cube tray allows? Use a muffin tin.

Wraps 

If you’re looking for a short-term freezing method (about a month maximum), consider using a reusable beeswax-coated cotton food wrap. This might be handy for something hard like a block of cheese, especially if you are looking to save space in a full freezer and want to avoid a space-intensive container completely. Just be sure to crimp the sides tightly to make them as airtight as possible to retain flavors and help avoid freezer burn.