The First Shop

Our first few days of The Trash Project here in Eugene weren't so bad either. Despite the fact that the dog chewed up one of our reusable bags, we haven't made any trash. But the real test was our first trash-free trip to the grocery store.

The Magic of Tare
We came prepped with plastic bags from previous shopping experiences, some special produce bags I got as a gift, reusable plastic tubs, a few glass jars, and our returnable milk jugs. If you're new to using your own tubs and jars in the store, make sure you take them to the register before you fill them up to have them weighed (or tared as they say in the biz). This way you won't pay for the weight of the container.

Simplified Shopping
Do you ever feel overwhelmed when you walk into the grocery store? I do. The variety of food, the bright lights, the choices, the cart madness... sometimes it can be too much. But shopping during this little project is quite different, and it was nice to be free of the burden of choice that usually weighs on me at the grocery store. We now have a defined set of criteria for making purchasing decisions and don't have to worry about anything else. Under normal circumstances, all sorts of factors spin through my head when contemplating a product (source, packaging, ingredients, price, etc.), but now there is only one - trash. With this single force driving our decisions, we were limited to shopping in 15% of the entire store, maybe less. We shopped in the bulk aisle. We shopped in the produce section. We perused the deli section on a mission for package free cheese. And that's about it - the whole center section of the store is off-limits for the project. (On a side note, we were able to convince the women at the cheese counter to use our bag for a chunk of cheese, but the downside is that it was twice as expensive as the already packaged form. Bummer.)


I really enjoyed this simplified shopping experience. It reinforced one of the key elements of this project - no processed foods. Processed foods always come with packaging. They aren't very good for you either, which leads me to a second key element of this project that jumped into my mind after the shop - making more things on your own.

Viva Salsa Fresca!!
There'll be more on these key elements later. Now I want to share the fines moment of our shopping experience - bulk salsa. That's right friends, you can finally empty the closet of all those empty salsa containers because here in Eugene, you only need one.

We just started shopping at a local, all volunteer co-op called The Growers Market. It's great. It's in an old train station storage building. They get great produce. They have a plethora of bulk items. They have the most random assortment of shopping carts collected from who knows where. A four-year old checked us out (not a place if you're in a hurry), and they have Emerald Valley salsa in bulk. The co-op buys huge tubs that a volunteer dispenses into a smaller pitcher for easy pouring. I am in heaven, and this whole project just got a whole lot easier.