Hey all,
Lately I’ve been working on going vegan, which has meant that I’ve been using beans as an ingredient a lot more in my cooking. I use just about any beans for hummus, I’ve made roasted chickpeas with my air fryer and want to start making falafel, I want to start adding black beans to my tacos, I use mung beans for omelettes, you get the drift.
Anyway, I was recently thinking about the packaging the beans come in. This came to mind since I’ve been re-evaluating the products I purchase and how to put my dollar where my heart is, and in looking at where my canned beans come from, I started thinking about the packaging of the dried beans I have.
While not all the dried beans I have include info about the ability to recycle the packaging, Walmart for all their flaws made things easy with some dried beans I got in the past and has the “Not yet recyclable” label from how2recycle.info, and I can guess that the other brands I have are in the same boat as they all appear to have the same packaging.
In comparison, I already know for certain that the cans for canned beans can be recycled, and the labels are just paper, meaning the same case for them. Now reading things from what I know it appears as if using canned beans is more environmentally suitable than dried, assuming both are sourced domestically, but I want to ask if there’s anything I might be forgetting here that could also factor into things that I may not be aware of. On top of this, some recipes specifically call for dried beans, and I’d have trouble substituting them with canned product, namely with falafel and my vegan omelettes.
Should I make the switch? Any and all input is greatly appreciated.
If there are any grocery stores near you that cater towards immigrant families, you can almost certainly find a substantial variety of dry beans and whole grains sold in bulk (usually up to something like 50 pounds) in burlap or paper.
I dream of a time where there’s a store in most towns that just sell bulk items in a “bring-your-own-container” situation. I know they exist some places, but obviously aren’t widespread
In the 1970s, growing up near Toronto, my family was part of a food co-op where my mother would go and work a half day a week, and we would buy food from the co-op that was brought in in bulk, and we used our own containers to bring it home.
Nowadays, there is a chain of bulk stores in Canada called the Bulk Barn hundreds of bulk goods, including many things you can find nowhere else. Typically, you use their containers, but they have a promotion where if you bring your own you get 15% off.
There are, but I’m in a unique situation with program I’m in where I’m only able to shop at a certain grocer as I currently get gift cards to assist with grocery shopping.
Would these be similar to the packages for rice you find at the store? I’ve heard about people bringing their own stuff to the bulk section, but I wouldn’t have a clue if that’s allowed where I live since I’ve only recently learned that that’s something people do. Growing up I don’t my family used the bulk section of the store so much as once.
Where I live, there isn’t really a “bulk section” in any of the “normal” grocery stores. Just at the front of the store there will be giant sacks of dry staple ingredients like beans, rice, and other grains available for individual purchase. No guarantees of course, but you might also be surprised to find that it’s more common than you expected.
Side note: one thing to consider with the bring your own container stuff is everything you buy in those kinds of stores came in these sacks too, so it doesn’t really reduce overall waste compared to just buying the whole sack itself.