If you’re someone with a concern towards the environment and are also a frequent shopper, then your best bet is reusable grocery bags. These bags are going to be beneficial when one uses them, many times. There are different types of reusable bags that can be used for grocery shopping including paper bags, tote bags, etc.
There are days when you end up out at the grocery store and unexpectedly need a bag. Your handbag or rucksack is already bearing what it typically contains. So you buy like five expendable plastic sacks and your hands hurt.
Plastic, in case you haven’t heard of now, is dangerous to our natural surroundings. Also, by one means or another, we are still employing plastic to different uses. As a matter of fact, plastic pollution is one of the prominent contributors to environmental problems that the earth is presently loaded with.
As indicated by a study, Indonesia positions second — after China — with regards to the country that produces the greatest plastic-based waste out into the sea. It is approximated that in Indonesia, an individual alone would use in normal 700 plastics for each year!
Now one can imagine that if all those plastic bags are substituted with a reusable shopping bag, we will be seeing cleaner oceans and beaches. Therefore, all we need is a bigger and better bag. A reusable grocery bag that you can buy online can cost you less than a dollar and it can carry almost anything, whether it is delicate, massive, or wet. It’s just that you need to have it with you all times.
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Pick a bag
If you have only recently started working as a grocery store bagger, or are a customer experiencing the chore of sacking your own groceries, then knowing how to appropriately bag your goods can prove to be useful. If you want to combat cracked eggs, squashed bread, or broken glass, you can buy a couple of grocery tote bags for they are durable and reusable.
Many of us have been using plastic shopping bags for quite a long time, but what about reusable tote bags? Besides the entire earth-saving part, reusable tote bagshave a lot of advantages over their plastic counterparts. A built-in handle enables you to close the bag, so your fruits don’t go moving everywhere on your trolley. Furthermore, at home, it becomes easier to see fruits and vegetables rather than coming across a wreck of plastic when you look into the crisper cabinet
They are spacious and can lodge at least a dozen apples, or clumsy stems of Swiss chard. They are light in weight, breathable, and most importantly, machine washable.
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Group similar items together
Dividing your grocery into four groups i.e. general storeroom items, meat, refrigerated foods, and produce, will bring down the odds for cross-contamination or ruin.
- Items that go in the freezer such as meat and ice cream should be assembled together with other perishable foodstuffs, like dairy to hold a cooler temperature. Sorting this stuff together additionally makes it simpler to unload everything that should be going into the freezer instantly.
- Uncouple ready-to-eat and uncooked meat to eliminate the risk of contamination or salmonella poisoning. Keep raw meat in separate grocery bags, as they tend to spill.
- Keep organic products, vegetables, and other ready-to-eat things together and separated from raw foods, particularly meats- – so as to avoid cross-contamination.
- Keep eggs away from any food item you want to eat raw, in case they break.
- Cleaning and chemical products should be grouped separately from any other food item, to secure against food deterioration.
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What goes in first?
Usually, bulkier and bigger products should go in first to build stability in the shopping bag so that smaller items do not get squashed beneath the bigger ones. Taller boxes such as those of cereal can be circumvented around the edges to make a steady wall. Jars and other hulky stuff should go in the base center of the sack. Normal-sized staples, for example, rice bags and oatmeal boxes can be placed in the center over the jars and cans. Fragile things such as bread or eggs lay over the medium-sized food.
- Don’t overburden your grocery bag
It is important to ensure that your grocery shopping bag does not surpass 15 pounds. Disperse the weighty items into a number of sacks to keep them from breaking. For canned products, constrain the number of jars to around 6 to 8 for every bag, contingent upon the can size & shape. Just be sure of how much weight your tote or paper bag can carry and fill in accordingly.
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Double bag when needed
Double-bagging is a good idea when you want to pack your bag with additional and heavier products.
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Consider what can be left unpacked
Toilet paper rolls, soda boxes, and big bags of dog food might not fit in your usual shopping bag. Thus, larger items can be left unpacked and handled on their own.
Once you’re back home, you should be able to take a breath of relief. You know that most of your grocery shopping is already organized. The most that needs to be done is squeezing it into cabinets and shelves.
