Day 18 of 20: This little piggy went to market...

Farmers Market is one way to purchase fresh food and other goods with less packaging than in grocery stores. The primary reason for this is that what's sold is grown or made locally and regionally, and sold directly to the consumer.

This morning I biked to the big Saturday market in my city with cloth bag and coffee thermos in hand. My goal was to find bread and cheese that wasn't packaged in plastic (and to find coffee). What I noticed was that while there was less individual packaging, plastic bags were everywhere for the taking.

If I'd wanted snap peas, for example, I could have dumped them in my cloth bag and returned the cardboard container to the vendor for zero packaging. Most vendors though put their products, packaging and all, into a plastic bag for consumers. 

For every canvas bag that someone had brought from home, I saw at least two plastic bags.

One vendor had a rack of biodegradable bags. I bought some of her organic kale and accepted the bag, thinking it'd be interesting to do an experiment (i.e., bury the bag in my backyard to see how long it takes to become 'one with the soil').   

The problem with most biodegradable packaging, however, is that most of us don't bury these bags in our compost or soil. Biodegradability requires aeration for decomposition. According to Packaging Digest, most 'biodegradable' packaging 

"...will end up in a landfill where it's unlikely that biodegradability will do it any good. In the oxygen-deprived enclosure of a landfill, things biodegrade anaerobically, which essentially is a big word meaning they generate a lot of methane as they decompose. Methane, you may have heard, is an extra-potent greenhouse gas. Landfills are the third biggest source of man-made methane emissions to the atmosphere. If trash didn't have that pesky quality of biodegradability, landfills would be a bit more benign."

Command Packaging, a producer of reusable bags, says it more bluntly: "The hype about biodegradable plastic bags is just that; hype. These bags will only degrade if disposed of in an organic composting facility which is unlikely in most U.S. cities today."

I should have said 'no, thanks'. 

The good news: I did find un-packaged bread and paper-wrapped cheese.

When I got home, I also found reusable muslin bags for sale online -- as well as a recipe for making one's own reusable bags -- for hauling and storing produce. Thanks to friend, Ginny, for mentioning that idea.