The problem
Want to swim through an ocean of plastic? Visit your local supermarket. Nothing makes Morgana’s blood boil more, as can be seen from her passionate twitter exchange earlier this year:

Good old Aldi, you’re still the best supermarket. But this plastic problem is endemic in shops and stores across the globe, and it’s just so UNNECESSARY.

Jas and Morgana eat enough for a family of five, they can’t have that kind of plastic guilt on their shoulders. Aubergines? Carrots? Tomatoes? These babies need to breathe.
The triple packets of peppers? If they can be sold individually without the wrapping, why do they need a plastic blanket when they are with their friends? The same goes for a bag of apples. Package deals don’t have to mean plastic deals.

The solution
Morgana and Jas decide to tackle this problem old-school: we hit the market.
Here in Amsterdam, there are several food markets, and this weekend we decided to visit Dappermarkt in the East.
Shopping from local markets has lots of benefits; produce is definitely cheaper and items are sold individually or by weight so there’s less plastic packaging. Also they had mangoes.

Evaluation
Whilst it was easy to get our veggies free from plastic, we were forced to notice the other items in our weekly shop that seem to be inescapably tied to plastic. Hummus? An essential for Jas and Morgana, yet sold in little plastic tubs. Pasta? Rice? Dry goods that could be packaged in something more sustainable.
However, seeing how easy it was to pack certain items without plastic, going to supermarkets again will definitely be particularly infuriating.

(Extra notes)
Starting from Day One of our challenge, we have decided to keep all of the plastic that we would normally recycle just to see how much we use in a month. We reckon this will be a pretty ridiculous amount, and we can already see an alarming number of plastic hummus tubs stacking up in our flat. Watch this (zero-waste) space.

This article is part of our 30 days  Zero Waste challenge.
Read what Jas and Morgana were up to in the past few days.

Day 1 / 2