Proactive Precycling

There's a valuable theory out there that instead of throwing things out, we need to reuse-reuse-reuse to lessen the amount of garbage in our landfills. And now there's a new term for a segment of today's eco-conscious consumers—precyclers. They're no longer happy to recycle things like plastic and aluminum; they want to purchase products that will contribute little waste to begin with. The Intelligence Group, a market research and trend consulting firm based in New York City, found that 45 percent of trendsetters and 14 percent of mainstream consumers have cut down on bottled water purchases in the past six months (See Thirsty for Change), while 49 and 16 percent respectively say they have cut down on use of plastic bags. Many industries are responding to this desire for less packaging-such as an effort within the music industry years ago to switch from plastic CD cases to cardboard cases. There is also increased interest in creating multi-use packaging because containers that can be refilled or reused have more merit for this group. -Denise Shoukas

Denise Shoukas is a regular foodspring.com contributor and is the author of foodspring’s food forager blog.