Go Green Easily: Reuse Glass Jars

img10Go green easily by reusing glass jars from sauces, olives, jams and even spices.

Instead washing jars out and throwing them in the recycling or, say it isn’t so, the garbage, use them again and again. It’s so easy to soak the label off, grab masking tape (it peels off easily) and relabel them for left-over soup or anything you can think of, really. You go to a warehouse grocery store and see a gallon of artichoke hearts but what to do with that large jar after the goodies are gone stumps you.

Put your flour in it to keep bugs out or use it for the jumbo bag of coffee beans you’ve been wanting to put in the freezer. Glass freezes well as long as you don’t subject it to extreme temperature changes and leave room for the food to expand while it’s freezing.

When freezing liquids always leave 1/2 to 1 inch of room from the top of the jar and keep the lid loose until your food is frozen so the jar won’t break.

Go green easily using glass jars and utilize the bulk foods. Most stores have bulk cereals, pastas, snack foods and other staples that can be bagged there and put in jars at home. They also have spices, honey, nut butters and syrups so why not reuse the same type jars for that?

You’re saving resources, counter clutter and you don’t have to guess what’s in the jar; if you use masking tape labels even spices aren’t a mystery. When the item inside the jar changes, peel off the old tape, put on a new piece and voila, a used glass jar gets a new life, again.

Go green easily with reused jars and be healthier. There is a lot of controversy about storing and microwaving food in plastic storage containers. Too many types of plastic leach unhealthy chemicals and vapors into the hot food when it’s cooking and also as it cools in the container.

Glass doesn’t leach, leak or warp when heated so it has a built-in safety feature. Using 8-12 ounce jam jars to store left-over soup will give everyone their own cups of soup to heat and serve, so clean up is a breeze. Going green is easier than you may have thought and you have the start of a new storage container collection already in your cupboard.

Soak off the labels, use tape for new labels, fill them up and reuse them when they empty. What could be easier? Money, resources and your healthiness are saved in larger doses for the future.

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