While making my Frozen Banana Smoothie, a question came to my mind. Can I reuse the zipper-style freezer bags I use to store my bananas, or at least find a way to buy them in bulk? Here is what an Internet search turned up.
Based on the information at The Simple Dollar, it is possible to use a dishwasher to clean freezer bags. It is also possible to buy larger quantities of bags if one belongs to a warehouse club, like Sam's. This answers both parts of my question on reusing freezer bags.
Other sites also make the recommendation to never reuse bags that had raw meat in them. For the most part, I would be doing this just for my bananas.
Another website, Kitchen Stewardship (which I have now liked on Facebook), is against washing unless absolutely necessary but suggests storing the used bags in the fridge or freezer to reuse for the same food. That will extend the life of the bag longer than the first website estimates.
My cousin just sent me a Facebook post confirming these methods. She is a vegetarian and says she rinses them and stores them in the freezer. She is still alive, so I guess the method works.
Now for the fun part: THE MATH! A box of 40 bags at 6 bags a week mathematically could be reused 7.8 times per year. Washing bags limits life to 16 uses due to wear of the seams (according to the first website). That means I can use the same box for 2.05 years. If a box costs me $3.49, I save $27.24 per year by reusing. If I get more than 16 uses by simply storing used bags in the fridge rather than washing, the savings continue beyond the 2.05 years. That may not look like a lot of money to some, but to me, it is almost another week of groceries or treating myself to a couple movies and popcorn. Additionally, mathematics says (grammatically, mathematics is singular, like physics, so it gets a singular verb) by doing this I will have prevented the landfilling of 600 plastic bags.
I think the numbers, and the cousin, make it worth the attempt.
As always, I welcome your comments. Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.
Based on the information at The Simple Dollar, it is possible to use a dishwasher to clean freezer bags. It is also possible to buy larger quantities of bags if one belongs to a warehouse club, like Sam's. This answers both parts of my question on reusing freezer bags.
Other sites also make the recommendation to never reuse bags that had raw meat in them. For the most part, I would be doing this just for my bananas.
Another website, Kitchen Stewardship (which I have now liked on Facebook), is against washing unless absolutely necessary but suggests storing the used bags in the fridge or freezer to reuse for the same food. That will extend the life of the bag longer than the first website estimates.
My cousin just sent me a Facebook post confirming these methods. She is a vegetarian and says she rinses them and stores them in the freezer. She is still alive, so I guess the method works.
Now for the fun part: THE MATH! A box of 40 bags at 6 bags a week mathematically could be reused 7.8 times per year. Washing bags limits life to 16 uses due to wear of the seams (according to the first website). That means I can use the same box for 2.05 years. If a box costs me $3.49, I save $27.24 per year by reusing. If I get more than 16 uses by simply storing used bags in the fridge rather than washing, the savings continue beyond the 2.05 years. That may not look like a lot of money to some, but to me, it is almost another week of groceries or treating myself to a couple movies and popcorn. Additionally, mathematics says (grammatically, mathematics is singular, like physics, so it gets a singular verb) by doing this I will have prevented the landfilling of 600 plastic bags.
I think the numbers, and the cousin, make it worth the attempt.
As always, I welcome your comments. Click on the Comment link below; it may say "No" or have a number in front of it.
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