I felt like I was cheating on my regular grocers today.  I went to a different one…  I went to Park Farm shop up at Falmer and bought a whole load of fruit and veg.  I went up there because I had to go that way for something else anyway and it made sense…  Then I went to Unithai (a Thai shop) in Hove and then Fish (a fishmongers) also in Hove. 

In the Thai shop I bought a 5kg bag of Thai Jasmine rice which will last us a good while. I think it cost around £10 – but I didn’t get an itemised receipt so can’t remember exactly. 5kg of Thai Jasmine rice from the supermarket would have cost around £15 and come in lots of little packets. 

I bought 2kg of brown basmati rice for around £5 which wasn’t particularly cheap. I haven’t managed to find brown rice in bulk locally anywhere which is a shame – so may have to switch to going online..

I also bought 1 litre of Kikkoman soy sauce for £6 ish (in a plastic bottle).  The shop was selling the Kikkoman 150ml glass bottles with plastic lids for £2.15 (1 litre would have worked out at £14.33) and it is currently £2.49 in the supermarket (1 litre would have worked out at £16.60).  

We often drizzle soy sauce over rice or noodles to add flavour and I like the Kikkoman brand as it contains very simple ingredients.  Unfortunately one of those ingredients is wheat and I’m currently in debate with myself as to whether I can allow an exception to my wheat free diet for soy sauce as I only use minimal amounts of it for flavouring…

If I had bought the equivalent amount of Kikkoman sauce in glass bottles I would have bought 7 glass bottles and 7 plastic lids instead of 1 plastic bottle and 1 plastic lid – neither choice is ideal really, so I decided to send them a message to ask them if they would consider changing their packaging to be more eco-friendly. We will see what they say in response (if anything….) Update – see their response here.

I am learning that it is very difficult to avoid plastic packaging entirely, but what I can do is reduce the amount of packaging by buying in bulk. Even if I did find somewhere that I could buy goods without packaging it will have been transported in some (most likely plastic) packaging anyway, so buying it in bulk is probably the best I can do – at least I can see what kind of packaging it would have been transported in.  

I bought loads of fish, which I will chop into portions and freeze.  I had fully intended to take a reusable container like I had with the chicken to buy the fish but completely forgot and that is why there is a plastic bag in the picture above – oh well better luck next time! 

I spent £74.52 in total on this weeks shop.  I didn’t make it to the butchers for the unpackaged ish cheese so that will be a job for another day!  I also spent about £4 on the top up shop this week.  

I am currently undertaking a Year of Eco Challenges . If you have a moment I would really appreciate it if you would consider sponsoring me with an action on my DoNation page. Also if you liked this post please click like on Facebook and follow on Twitter – thanks so much!