Paper can be used for some of these. E.g. sugar and flour are usually sold in plain paper (not even cardboard) packaging[1] in Germany and, from a cursory check, in some other European countries. It doesn't work for everything because it's not airtight.
They're also sold in paper sacks in the US. You do have to be quite careful with the sack to avoid puffing flour out of pinholes when you set it down.
I'm rather fond of the packaging on Wasa crackers, which appears to be waxed paper... but of course with Wasa crackers, how would you even know if they had gone stale? ;)
Of course... but to clarify, I was asking about reuse specifically. I can't think of anything you'd reuse the paper packaging used with sugar or flour for...
Right. Re-reading the thread that suddenly seems obvious and my comment a bit pointless.
To add something more substantive: Every large city here has a couple of "zero packaging" store that lets you bring your own containers for all kind of dry goods, like sibling posts mentioned. Sometimes you have to use containers you bought in the store (so they know the weight), often you just weigh the containers going in, so they can subtract the weight going out. I still have two containers with the weight written on them in a marker pen.
Note that these are tiny stores, and the prices are fairly high (obviously the produce tends to be organic and regionally produced, where possible). This is not yet a mass phenomenon. It might be getting there, though, since I've seen regular supermarkets with a small selection of dry goods available in that way. Or maybe it's just a fad.
In a similar vein, some supermarket chains let you bring reusable containers to the meat/deli counter: they weigh the product on a little slip of plastic (like they usually do already), but instead of packing everything in one or two additional bags of plastic, they use your tupperware. Employees are not allowed to touch your containers, though (food safety). I'm sure they love that. I've never seen it done in practice.
For some reason, there's often a big hubbub about the plastic bags you get at those counters as well as in the fruits & veggie aisles. For things like onions and bananas (come with their own packaging) or apples and peaches (gotta rinse them thoroughly anyway) I usually simply don't use any extra packaging (no, cashiers don't mind). And it seems a bit farcical to worry about an extremely thin plastic bag when you're buying meat. I guess every bit helps. At the same time, the waste created by those bags, which weigh so little you need specialist equipment to get an estimate, always seemed trivial compared to almost all the prepackaged stuff in the supermarket. It's probably because those plastic bags are particularly harmful if they reach rivers or the ocean, though I'm not sure if this is a widespread problem here.
When you bring your own cup to the coffee to go place, you usually get a 5-10% discount; this is true for most places, especially the chains who realize that this is cheap way to get good publicity and customer retention. While also not the norm, I think this is something that some people actually do.
I bring mason jars and reusable produce bags to the store to buy coffee, rice, green beans and other solids. The store even ran a promotion to give away the produce bags, so a lot of people in the neighborhood have them. I agree, this might not work too well for meat, but as they say, "perfect is the enemy of good enough".
There are more and more stores that sell dry food without packaging. The customers have to bring their packaging (jars, etc..) required to take the goods home.
Wow really? I live in NYC and I've never seen any of that in any regular grocery store.
I suppose you might be able to do that in Chinatown or at some specialty spice or coffee stores... and maybe this is a dumb question, but: how do they weigh it?
Because with paper/plastic the weight is negligible so it doesn't really make a difference. But if you bring your own heavy mason jars then you need to tare it... and if you're doing it yourself then what, you need to affix the labels it prints to your jars? (Which would be annoying to have to scrape off every time.) Or if the cashier does it when you check out then you don't have an empty one to tare with... how does it work in practice? I'm genuinely curious how this gets solved.
I don't recall seeing one in the US yet, but they are getting more numerous in Germany. I haven't shopped there yet, but from what I read you are expected to tare the scale. How they handle that at the checkout I don't know.
Sure, here in Vermont we have lots of dry good options (cereal, dry tea, spices, etc) that are bulk into reusable containers. Pringles aren't conducive to that but I'd certainly scoop tortilla chips, goldfish, etc if I could.
Goldfish yes, but the store would have to accept a loss due to crumbification of the chips from people jabbing the scoop into the pile of chips all the time
Heck I think that with a barrel of tortilla chips, most of them would simply crush under its own weight.
Fun fact, this is why berries are sold in clamshells too. You can't buy "bulk" strawberries because they'd just compress into goo. They're actually placed in the clamshells as they're being picked in the fields.
Do you have examples of successful packaging reuse for solid dry food such as Pringles? Or cereal? Or sugar? Or chocolate?
(And that's before even getting into packaging of meat, fish, etc.)