Actress and urban gardener Amy Aquino (@aquino_amy) took to Instagram to show off a money and cost-saving hack for juice lovers.
It's a hack your mother or grandmother may remember: using frozen juice concentrates.
In the Instagram video, Aquino shows off how she enjoys healthy juices while reducing the amount of plastic, sugar, and money spent compared to conventional juice — all by switching to concentrates.
The scoop
First, Aquino heads to the frozen section of a local supermarket where she shows off the frozen juice concentrates, which often come in cardboard cylinders with metal ends and one small plastic seal.
While the containers are small, they pack a punch. Aquino says that depending on the juice, one package can produce anywhere from 48 ounces to 64 ounces of juice.
Aquino then shows off some plastic bottles of store-bought juice that clearly state the contents are already made from concentrate — they're just mixed with water and put into plastic jugs. As Aquino explains, that's a lot of waste.
Aquino pours the defrosted juice into a container and even mixes some concentrates together, like apple and cranberry. She then pours a little bit of her concentrate into a glass and fills the rest with her own water.
Aquino loves the hack because she says juice can also be excessively sweet, and she says she "was already diluting" her juices anyway to reduce the sugar content.
How it's helping
This hack is a great way to reduce plastic trash. It's estimated that only 9% of plastic waste is properly recycled and much of the rest can wind up in landfills or as ocean pollution.
Switching to concentrates will also save you a good amount of money. At the Kroger grocery store in Aquino's video, the frozen concentrates cost $2.69. A plastic jug of diluted apple juice made from concentrate by the popular brand Mott's will cost nearly double that.
What everyone's saying
Instagrammers had a lot of thoughts.
"Why didn't I think of that?" writes one user.
"Great idea," writes another. "I had forgotten about frozen concentrate. We've been conditioned to buy the big containers of 'water' with a little juice," they wrote.
Another user says they're turning 30 in April and "also grew up with the frozen concentrates."
"To me, the taste is superior, was more cost-effective, a healthier option, and more sustainable packaging," they write. " It blows my mind how far we have come from simple and great because of plastic usage."
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