One TikTok user wants to change how you think about food storage, proving the best resealable bags are already hidden in your kitchen. Her money-saving hack has people talking — and reconsidering their food storage practices.
The scoop
Before you throw out "single-use" resealable food packaging — like salad bags and frozen food bags — consider this money-saving hack by TikTok user Cindy Li (@cindydoedee).
@cindydoedee what else are you reusing that other people are throwing away? Dont throw away your plastic food packaging without seeing if you can repurpose, reuse and upcycle them first! ##itsnottrash##sustainability##foodwaste ♬ Whistling you want to go for a walk - Ken Nakagawa
Li often shares her tips for foraging and living more sustainably on the platform. In a recent video, Li shared how she washes and reuses "single-use" grocery store packaging to store food items.
"These are plastic bags," she says in the video, showing a container full of empty bags usually designated for landfill. "They all used to be food packaging — and they are not trash."
Instead of buying disposable food storage bags, Li washes and saves the bags from tortillas, jerky, nuts, frozen foods, and more to store her food. In her video, Li demonstrates her hack by packaging a bulk quantity of rice noodles into single servings for freezing.
"Just because something isn't marketed as reusable or sustainable doesn't mean that it can't be," she says in the video.
How it's working
Aside from saving money on single-use storage bags, this simple hack also helps save the environment. Disposable food storage bags are often made of plastic, which will never fully break down in the environment, polluting the air, soil, and water as microplastics. Using the plastic you can't avoid to its fullest potential is a way to cut down on this environmental impact.
Repurposing packaging also helps prevent plastic items from entering landfills, where they release harmful, planet-warming gases. While biodegradable food storage bags and reusable silicone storage bags do exist to help mitigate this environmental impact, Li's hack also helps avoid production-based pollution from these alternatives.
"Loving deinfluencing needing 'aesthetic' reusable bags when these already exist in your home," one commenter said.
What people are saying
Many people are looking to ditch plastic storage containers, so it's no surprise commenters on the video loved the hack. Many viewers wrote they would make the money-saving tip a practice in their homes.
"This is so smart!" one commenter wrote. "Great tip."
Other commenters shared how they repurpose food packaging, with many using them as mini garbage bags instead of buying new.
"Nice reuse," one commenter wrote. "I generally use these ridiculously unavoidable bags for cleanup on nature walks."
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