Waste warriors

When she goes to the supermarket, Bea Johnson brings along a sealable glass jar so the butcher can slide in a pork cutlet.

In the bulk aisle, she fills reusable bags she makes from old bed sheets to carry rice, pasta, oatmeal or nuts.

In fact, everything the Marin County, Calif., woman and her husband buy is without packaging. They make their own household cleaning products, buy soap that comes unwrapped and return milk bottles to suppliers for refills.

“The amount of money you can save by just carrying your own water bottle is huge. Plus, the more you get away from plastic, the more likely you are to buy fresh,” says Johnson, who blogs about her lifestyle at zerowastehome.blogspot.com.

Johnson has emerged as a guru for people looking to take green living to a new level.

“We’re definitely seeing more people interested in living without waste but the demographic has changed,” says Sarah Kennedy of San Francisco’s Rainbow Food Cooperative, which offers everything from shampoo to seaweed in bulk.

“Before it was tree-hugging hippies who washed and reused their produce bags. Now we’re seeing a much more middle-class movement, more moms with their kids, with Tupperware boxes and neatly folded linen bags.”

The effort to reduce packaging has moved into the mainstream. California’s state Assembly approved a bill that would ban plastic bags from stores and require retainers for paper bags, though it has yet to reach the Senate.

Towns and cities across the United States have already placed restrictions on plastic bags, including an outright ban in larger stores by three North Carolina counties.

Seattle’s city council imposed a 20-cent fee on both plastic and paper bags in 2008, but that was later overturned through a citizen initiative. That same year, the Spokane City Council backed a voluntary program asking businesses to give bonuses to shoppers who bring their own bags.

The health benefits of a wrapper-free life are a major theme for Colin Beavan in New York. He wrote a book, “No Impact Man” (later made into a documentary film) about a year he and his family spent without electricity and living with as little waste as they could.

Though their experiment ended in November 2007, they’ve committed to staying packaging-free.

“Most of the fattening foods, the bad stuff, come heavily wrapped,” Beavan says. “If you confine yourself to fresh products from the supermarket or farmers market, your family is going to be a lot healthier.”

Beavan buys most of his food at the farmers market in Manhattan’s Union Square. He returns egg cartons and milk bottles and buys unpackaged blocks of cheese.

“I think my family is a lot happier now,” he says. “It’s not simply about less packaging, it’s about changing your whole outlook, about wanting less and getting so much more as a family.”

I wondered if I, too, could live without any packaging, except for plastic bags I reuse during trips to the supermarket.

For the last month, every food item I’ve bought has been without wrapping. I go to the bulk aisle of my local co-op for pasta, rice, beans, flour, oatmeal, nuts and anything else that I can pour into my own bags.

Apart from saving vast amounts of chemicals and oil that go into making shopping bags and reducing the giant soup ocean-clogging plastic, saying no to packaging has improved my waistline and my wallet.

With no more sad-looking, single-serving microwave meals, and my coffee from a paper cup replaced with a drink from my water bottle, I feel more energetic and less stressed.

Because I bring broccoli and carrots to work and don’t touch additives, my skin is clearer. The sudden arrival of middle-age spread has disappeared from my waist.

I was almost overcome with joy when I found a supermarket steps from my home that sold chocolate and dried apricots in bulk, so dessert was back on.

Financially, all of this has been a major boost. Carrots and onions unburdened by plastic are a lot cheaper, and making my own shampoo saves money.

The major downside is that I am now a crushing bore. Where once my conversations might have been about sports and cinema, now all my sentences seem to begin with, “Did you know …” followed by a list of places you can get refills on shampoo, honey or milk, or the best type of reusable bags for buying flour.