It’s possible to shop plastic-free anywhere—even Walmart!
My local farmers market closed for the season 😢 so I stopped by Walmart on my way home this morning. The nearest organic grocery store was 20 minutes away and didn’t open until 9 am (40 minutes after I would have arrived) so that didn’t make sense time-wise or fuel-wise.
Walmart has a limited selection of organic produce, all of which is wrapped in plastic 🙁 So I picked up conventionally grown bananas (I look for the orphans, which often get thrown away), honeydew, pomegranate, orange and zucchini. When I buy conventional produce, I’m careful to avoid items on the Environmental Working Group’s Dirty Dozen list (highest pesticide levels) and prioritize items on their Clean Fifteen list (lowest levels). This helps me reduce my pesticide exposure as well as the planet’s 🌎
Other Clean Fifteen, plastic-free produce I could have bought at Walmart today: avocados, pineapples, cabbages, onions, asparagus, mangoes, eggplants, kiwis, cantaloupe and cauliflower!
I don’t love shopping at Walmart (I’m well aware of their issues), but I wanted to show that you don’t need to have access to a special kind of store to shop package-free or pesticide-free. What’s important is making the best decision you can in every situation, over and over again 💚