My First Bulk Buy

I'm trying to buy more in bulk. We don't have a co-op here so it's really important that I try to buy in bulk when I can. My food budget is pretty tight but there is a little bit of room if I plan ahead. This month's bulk buy was 25lbs of organic sugar. We don't use sugar a lot but I do bake with it and my dh likes to have sugar in his coffee. We were normally buying it in small plastic pouches. This 25lb bag was all paper. I'm storing it in 3 glass gallon jars in my cool/dark pantry. The lids do seal closed so they should be well preserved until I need them. The one thing I'm not happy with is that it's from South America. However, I'm not ready to give up sugar.
Next month, peanut butter.

Waste reduction challenge

Our main waste problem is food packaging. We use calico bags for grocery shopping and I recycle all the cardboard and paper that comes with the shopping but there seems to be so much of it. In the winter I use the cardboard to help get the fire started but in the summer months it is overwhelming. I keep paper like butchers paper to drain oily food on and notices from school and the like are clipped together to be used as a message pad by the phone.

Plastics are a big problem. They just go out in the rubbish. I try to buy things with minimal packaging but there is still too much. Our milk comes in plastic bottles , they can be recycled but with a family of 5 we go through a lot of milk.

So the challenge for our family is to cut down on food packaging.