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I poked around on your blog for a bit, but couldn’t find any practical suggestions. How can a city-dweller with an oven, chest freezer, instant pot, and fridge acquire meal without packaging and without 8 hours of administrative overhead per week?

My opinion: just use steel cans.

Steel has a 80%+ recycling rate, and even if thrown in the garbage... steel is one of the easiest materials to "mine" out of a garbage pit. Just shove everything into a blast furnace, and the things that don't burn is probably steel.

Obviously a bit simplified: but that's the secret to glass, aluminum, and steel recycling. The high-temperature "purification" process of these materials makes for a very easy recycling process, even if there are contaminants in the material. In contrast, paper and plastic becomes useless due to contamination very easily.

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The amount of food available in steel cans is quite significant. Tuna, Salmon, Chicken, Peas, Carrots, Corn, Apricots, Peaches, Spinach, Pineapples, Beans, Potatoes, tomato paste... to name a few.

Subsisting on canned food is boring, but doable. You've got meats, every major veggie, starches and fruits. Mix it up with some grains (ex: Rice, Flour), fresh starches (Potatoes keep well and don't really need to be in a can), fresh veggies (Onions keep well).

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A combination of fresh fruits + cans manages to keep my trips to the grocery store down to once-per-week. Most fresh foods don't keep for a whole week (ex: Fresh Peppers, Fresh Basil, only stays good for a few days... while fresh ground beef / fresh chicken only stays for about 2 or 3 days).

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The counterargument to steel is that it is heavier than plastic. So it arguably takes more energy to ship steel cans than plastic containers. I haven't done the math however, but I assume steel is overall better for the environment.

Steel cans have a plastic liner (acrylic and a polyester, usually.) Reusable glass with bottle deposit is probably the way to go.

The amount of plastic liner in steel cans is minuscule compared to plastic-packaging. And since its bonded to the Steel, you don't have to worry about disposal issues (ex: bags getting stuck in conveyor belts or whatever).

> Reusable glass with bottle deposit is probably the way to go.

I would bet that the lid on a glass bottle may have more plastic in it than a steel can, for example.

But glass is definitely a highly-recyclable material. But you don't really find as much stuff in glass as in steel cans, and certainly not at the same prices.

I can get 15oz of peas (or corn) in a steel can for roughly $0.70 for example. I don't think that sort of stuff comes that cheaply in glass containers.

We learn through experience.

I've found that when I answer what I did or offer suggestions, which I've done hundreds of times, the answer is almost always, "Oh, but that wouldn't work for me," followed by their reasons for keeping doing what they've been doing, with an air of "Ha, checkmate! Your special case doesn't apply to me."

By contrast, when someone acts, they find answers for themselves.

You described resources and constraints almost identical to mine except I didn't yet have a pressure cooker, which made everything easier. If you challenge yourself to go a week without food packaging, you won't die. You will figure out solutions that work for you. You will answer your question better than I could.

In my case, I took about six months from conceiving that challenge to taking it on. I planned and analyzed but didn't actually act. When I acted, I did what I couldn't plan for lack of experience. Specifically I said I would buy no packaged food for a week but could finish what was in my cupboards. I made it 2.5 weeks. Now I find answers for new challenges everywhere because of my experience.

If you take on the challenge, I'd love to hear how it goes. I believe you'll be amazed at what you can solve beyond your expectations.

I suspect if I took on the challenge, it would induce enough life-administrative stress that I would be at serious risk of losing my job and being kicked out of the country.

I felt that way too. Doing it changed everything. For example, I was pleasantly surprised to find cooking from scratch saved time and money and led to more social interactions. Now I often host heads of corporations for dinners, a Nobel Peace prize winner, etc.

If you change your mind, let me know, though I probably won't find it in this thread. I'm easy enough to connect to from my web page, http://joshuaspodek.com.

> Now I often host heads of corporations for dinners, a Nobel Peace prize winner, etc

Okay, if you have the social connections that you're hosting Nobel Peace Prize winners and heads of (implicit: larger than 200 employees) corporations for dinner, then there is definitely something you're not saying about the resources you have available to accomplish this.

Like, I don't even know what country you live in. I don't know how far your house is from a grocery store. I don't know what percentage of the food in that grocery store is unpackaged. I don't know how many farmers/gardeners you have a relationship with. I don't know how much time you have to spend gardening. I don't know how bad of a headache your wife would have if dinner wasn't ready until 9:30pm. I don't know what ADHD medication you're trying to titrate.

So all I have to go on are my circumstances. When I spend 30 seconds predicting what I'd have to do to "avoid all food which comes in a package", a list of like 10-20 problems comes to mind. Could I solve all of those problems? Probably.

But in the 1.5 years it takes me to solve them, there is a good chance that I would be fired from my poor performance from my visa sponsoring job and get kicked out of the country.

> By contrast, when someone acts, they find answers for themselves.

Are you saying that you don't have any highly-distressing personal problems for which you've been seeking answers for half a decade?

Get rid of your car for starters. Shop at markets where they don't cover anything in plastic. Adjust what you eat around avoiding buying plastic, as much as you can.

I live close to central London. I don't have a car.

This is so far out of what I, a west-coast american, can actually accomplish its kind of funny. I know you are being serious and those are all great suggestions that I would love to implement, but to address them: things are so spread out here I literally can't get to work/a grocery store without a car, there's a single farmers market, which runs for 4 hours every Sunday once a week and doesnt cover everything in plastic. Its literally unobtainable for someone living here. Maybe directly inside the city its possible to go carless and shop only at farmers markets, but being downtown would be way too expensive.

It would be motivating to know cases where "everyone can act now by themselves" really worked. I don't know any. Big change usually happens through organizations lobbying for something. Organization is the keyword here. Individual change rarely makes a difference if not organized.

> organizations lobbying for something

The more generic term is politics.

Why not both? You can stop personally contributing to the problem while you also advocate for system-level changes. Also, there's likely personal benefit (e.g., improved health, decreased cost) that comes with making these changes.

I agree. But without tools, marketing, lobbying, policy-making, etc., it's hard to make lasting changes.

Don't worry about lasting change, worry about what your contribution to the problem is. I think the veg*n community is a good example where a proportionately small group of people stuck to personal commitments to not eat meat or animal products, and have (decades later) gotten mainstream acceptance for that. You can now have a vegan meal at Burger King, but only because a group of people weren't worried about making lasting change they were just worried about living in line with their values :)

Comparing one's individual waste to something like 1 cruise ship is like a grain of sand to a beach. It shouldn't be the focus.

I think of it more like comparing running a marathon to taking a single step. I've run many marathons, each a single step at a time.

Or maybe it's more like comparing one post of mine to my strategy. This podcast episode describes a lot of my strategy: https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episod.... It might give you more context than just one response to an article. I'd appreciate your thoughts on it.