Avoiding plastic completely can be a challenge. However, there are ways you can minimize your plastic intake and repurpose plastic items in your home.Â
A Redditor shared a simple, genius idea for reusing frozen fruit bags from the grocery store. Instead of throwing out the plastic bags when they finished their frozen fruit, the Redditor used them to store and freeze other food products.
Fellow Redditors were impressed with the simple hack and eager to give it a try at home.
"Clever! I like it!" responded one user. "Definitely had not thought of that myself but will more than likely use this hack because I hate buying freezer bags (or any ziploc type bags)."
"So smart! Never thought of this before, nice," commented another.
Reusing plastic freezer bags is a great way to save money on storage containers. Instead of buying new bags, repurpose bags you already have to reduce the amount of money you spend and the amount of waste you generate.
When reusing plastic bags, it's important to first thoroughly clean the bags before adding new food products. Further, while reusing bags is a sustainable way to reduce waste, plastic bags do contain microplastics. To limit your exposure to microplastics, consider using food storage products made of bamboo, glass, or beeswax.
Plastic pollution is a major global crisis that has devastating effects on the environment. According to the EPA, plastic takes thousands of years to break down, leaching toxic microplastics in the process. Plastic waste threatens both land and aquatic ecosystems, as organisms mistakenly ingest harmful pieces of plastic.
By recycling and repurposing plastic products, you help reduce the total amount of plastic pollution. Repurposing items also helps prevent plastic items from entering landfills, where they emit harmful, planet-warming gases.
Along with recycling and repurposing plastic products, you can reduce your environmental footprint by repurposing other unwanted items, such as old clothes and shoes. Organizations, including For Days, ThredUp, and GotSneakers are dedicated to sustainability and help consumers repurpose old products.
Redditors continued to discuss other ways to repurpose the freezer bags.
"I do this too!" wrote one user. "They're good quality bags! Some of them I even fill with dirt and use them for my seedlings."
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