Bulk buying environmental benefits?

Question

I have to write a persuasive letter for science class and my topic is buying in bulk. I already know about the ammount of money spent is cheeper but i need reasons that its better for the environment any websites or info you have will help. i need proof so PLEASE SITE YOUR SOURCE!!!!!! thanks

Answer 1

Your source is me.  I buy in bulk.  We have over a years worth of food stored in our pantry.

I've touched on this subject many times in questions I've answered, but most people give thumbs down, or ignore what I have to say.

We only go to the store once or twice a year.  Most people are going to the store several times a week, if not every day.  The savings on fuel right there are signifigant.

Because we buy in bulk, we also cook from scratch.  So that means I grind my own wheat into flour and bake our own bread.  We average about two loaves of bread a week.  The bread I bake at home is very good, and comprable bread at the grocery store would be expensive...$4-6 a loaf.

So take two loaves of bread a week at the "low" price of $4 a loaf.  That's $8 a week, which is $32 a month, plus the fuel that would have been used to go and purchase that fresh bread from the store once a week, AND the fuel used to transport that bread to the store by the delivery trucks.

A years worth of bread would cost me $384 at the grocery store, plus all the "hidden" fuel/trasportation costs.   If I purchased my bread from the store, I would also have at least 96 plastic bags the bead is sold in, not to mention the grocery bags they would have put the bread into at the time of sale.  So the plastic bags make even more hidden cost from the manufacturing of the plastics, to the trasportation of the plastic bags to the bakers, or the grocery store.

My homemade, extremely healthy, zero preservative bread costs a whopping $.10 cents a loaf to make....that's right, ten CENTS.

So a years worth of bread for me, at two loaves a week costs,with 52 weeks in a year comes out to $10.40 for an entire years worth of bread.

Since wheat stores virtually forever, I can go once every 10-20 YEARS and buy enough bulk wheat in 50 pound burlap sacks to store for the next 10-20 years.  That's quiet the fuel savings!  

The only waste product I have from an entire years worth of bread baking is one plastic foil pouch my bulk yeast comes in.  Everything else is completely recyclable.

For the average person, buying in bulk this would however not be true.  I own goats, and make my own butter.  Most people are not going to milk dairy animals, so they would be purchasing their butter from the store.

Butter can be purchased in bulk from places like Costco, and Sam's Club.  Butter keeps very well in the freezer.  An entire years worth of butter could be purchased in one shopping trip if someone choose to be organized enough.  Of course the butter needed to make bread would generate the paper/foil wrappers from the store bought butter.

We purchase an entire beef cattle ever year.  We pay $2.25 cents a pound for the meat, cut and wrapped by the butcher.  Of course this means having a freezer at home you can put about 800 pounds of meat into.  $2.25 cents a pound for every single cut of the meat, from the hamburger (kind of expensive for hamburger) to the prime rib roast (dirt cheap for prime rib) from the beef cow.

Even with paying the electric bill to run a freezer all year, it still comes out to a signifigant savings on the cost of meat.

We raise a lot of our own meat, but there are some things, like a beef cow, and chickens I do not raise (no room on our farm currently).

I never pay more than $.59 (fifty nine cents) a pound for chicken.  When it goes on sale, I buy several and store them in the freezer.  Same with chicken b*****s...never more than $.99 cents a pound.  So when the price of chicken b*****s goes back up to $2.50-$3 a pound, we are still eating the $.99 cent a pound chicken.

I buy items like terriaki, BarBQ sauce, steak sauce, ect in one gallon jugs.  I'm usually paying about $2 more than the "convience" sizes cost at the grocery stores.  The "convience" sizes hold only a fraction of what is in the gallon jugs.  So not only do I go to the store less, but there is MUCH less packaging.

I cook a lot of things with a tomato base (spaghetti, stews, soups, ect).  I buy tomatoes, and tomato sauce in #10  cans.

#10 cans are one gallon cans.  I pay about as much for the one gallon cans of tomato products as the 28oz cans of tomato products cost at the grocery store.  There are 128oz in a gallon.  My savings are signifigant, and once again, not as much packaging.

Tomato products from a one gallon can can easily be divided into plastic containers and then frozen since one gallon is probably too much to use at a time for most people.  The plastic containers of course can be used over and over again.  The one gallon cans the tomato products come in are also in themselves extremely useful, and rarely do they make it to the recycling bin, since we have so many uses for them.

So not only do we save on the cost of tomato products, but we also save on the cost of having to buy containers for nuts, bolts, ect in my husbands shop, and the dozens of uses I come up with for those handy cans.

Buying in bulk also means being prepared to make purchases as sales come up.  I was at a pharmacy once after the holidays.  They had a very large bin filled with voltive candles in red and green Christmas colors, for one penny each.  They are normally $.25-.$35 cent each.  I now have enough red and green voltive candles to last my entire lifetime, and any power outage that happens, even if the power stays out for the next ten years.

There are also things that happen when you buy in bulk, and have a well stocked pantry that people do not think about.  I'm not at the store....I'm at home. I'm not just saving fuel though.  I have more time to devote to my personal life, and my marriage.  People greatly underestimate the need for devoting time and energy into healthy and happy marriages.

Healthy, happy marriages means no divorce, and the splitting up of people into two households, and the purchase of more goods (couches, microwaves, tv's, ect) to keep those two households running.

It also means I have more time to devote to doing things like building habitats for native bees, stacking some lava rock for our endangerd salamanders, planting more things to feed ourselves and the wildlife, ect.

Because we stay out of the stores, we also stay away from temptation.  We do not come home with cupcakes, potato chips, and microwavable pizzas, or silly gigets and gadgets we do not need.  So our health is improved, because we eat better foods.  Our teeth suffer less, because we do not have the usual sugar in our diet (I'm in my 40's and have not a single filling, cavity nor a lost tooth).

Better health is a bit hard to say exactly how that is good for the environment.  Less trips to the Doctor, and Dentist.  Less need for us to use perscription drugs.  80% of the drugs, both perscription and over the counter that you buy in the U.S.A. come from China.  So we are not using drugs that have great hidden fuel/trasportation costs.

Of course over and over again, there is the lower generation of waste products.  Very often buying in bulk means that your food products are coming in highly recyclable packaging.

Buying in bulk also means there was much less cost in the manufacturing of that product.  I buy dried split peas in 25 pound sacks, for about $6 a sack.  Or I can buy one can of Progresso Soup for about $2.  To buy a comprable amount of canned soup that I can make with the 25 pound sack of dried split peas, I'd have to spend about $500-$800 on canned soup, with all the manufacturing, and trasportation costs "hidden."

Buying in bulk also means you are less of a burden to society.  If a terrorist act happens, or a hurricane, or bad snow storm, or death, divorce, or loss of job happens in your family, you still have food to eat.  "You" do not put a strain on the system, because you are prepared and can feed yourself and your family.

My husband is the main income.  My horse broke his hand, and he was unable to work for three months.  What a relief to be able to put all of our money toward the needed bills and not have to worry about also affording groceries.

After 9/11 happened the realestate business stopped cold for 9 solid months.  My Mom didn't have a single sale that entire time.  Yet it was a no stress time.  She had plenty of food and didn't have to worry at all about coming up with money for groceries.  Her money was able to go toward the main bills (including mortgage) and she rode out 9 months of no income.  The benefits there are hard to touch on.   Everything from fewer homeless people, to a less stressed society, because people were prepared, to no fuel used going to food banks.

I hope this long winded reply helps you out.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 2

when you buy in bulk you ideally will have fewer trips to the store

less packaging is another environmental advantage

BUT the best thing you can do.. is cut down on buying things you dont really need - or buy USED.. rather than buying anything at all...

Answer 3

Here is a source for your persuasive letter.

http://sustainablechoices.stanford.edu/a...

"Buy big. If you can’t buy bulk bins that allow you to refill your own container, buying in larger quantities still reduces packaging by increasing the volume-to-surface-area ratio."

The key is the reduced packaging.  If you buy a larger container, the amount of product should increase at a larger rate compared to the surface area.

This is not true if what you buy is just three of the regular containers in a cardboard box and wrapped in plastic.  You may see that in Sam's Club with laundry detergent for example.

Good luck with your paper.

Answer 4

I have noticed a trend recently. It seems that many retailers have caught on to customers' preference for larger sized packaging. On my most recent trip to Wal-Mart, I was surprised to find that both our favorite brand of dog food and the wal-mart brand of large ziploc bags were actually more expensive per unit for the larger package than the smaller one. When I first began grocery shopping, the common wisdom was to buy larger packages because it was cheaper per unit, and simply repack the product into smaller packages at home. The opposite is now true.

Besides the obvious thought that the retail giants are trying to pull a fast one on me, I'm also dismayed that they have chosen to do this because it will result in a overabundance of packaging materials being sent to the landfill. For instance, I purchased two smaller packages of the ziploc bags, versus one package---that's double the packaging that must now be recycled.

This new practice is not only bad for our pocketbooks, but bad for the environment.

2.I'm starting a new, weekly series of posts called "Cheaper isn't always better" and it starts with this one. The goal is to point out money saving myths that can actually end up costing you more. The first myth I intend to bust is the one about buying in bulk.

In college, a few friends and I split the cost of a membership to BJ's so that we could buy our groceries in bulk. Instead of buying the campus meal plan, we did all of our own cooking to save money and eat healthier foods, so a bulk store membership seemed like a good idea. The idea was that we could stock up on basics like pasta and rice and get a lot more for the same amount of money. I have to admit I was a little reluctant to join (there was something about the $40+ membership fee that put me off), but the excitement of my fellow house-mates who'd had memberships in the past finally won me over.

I should have listened to my gut, though. While it is true that per pound, shopping at wholesale stores saves money, do you really need to buy your ground cinnamon by the pound? We ended up buying things we never would have bought just because they were such a good deal. My friends would come home with 3 pounds of Pop Tarts, a 5 pound block of cheese, and a pantry's worth of microwavable Easy Mac. By the end of the week, the Pop Tarts would be gone, the Easy Mac boxes were nearly empty and the block of cheese was basically untouched. In another week the cheese would be moldy and thrown out.

When I went shopping I tried to restrict myself to the basics and buy the smallest quantities available, like we had originally planned, and for the most part I was able to do it. But still, I ended up buying more than we needed and sometimes more than we could eat before the food went bad. As a result, we ended up eating more so that we wouldn't have to throw things away.

Buying in bulk has it's hidden costs. One is that when you have more, you use more. This goes for food, cleaning supplies and toiletries. Where you used to be always looking for ways to cut back, you get comfortable and stop paying attention. If you've got a big box of cereal, you'll pour a little more in your bowl in the morning or even have a second bowl. And when you go to brush your teeth, you'll find yourself squeezing a little extra toothpaste onto your brush because you've got another giant tube in the medicine cabinet.

This backfires in two ways. First, when you use more, you have to buy more. You'll end up buying another giant box of cereal before you know it. Secondly, when you have more food around to eat, you'll find yourself eating more. This can destroy your diet and your health. You might be eating more because you don't want food to go bad and be forced to throw it out. You might be eating more because you bought a giant box of junk food because it was on sale. Either way, when you've got a lot of food in the house, especially unhealthy foods, it's easy to fall into bad habits. And I noticed at BJ's that the foods they carried weren't very healthy. What I remember most is the frozen pizzas, potato chips, 2 gallon tubs of ice cream, hamburger patties, éclairs from the bakery, and super-sized bags of M&Ms - and I've always been a healthy eater inclined to ignore such foods. Maybe Sam's Club is different, but I doubt it.

In the end, we stopped going to BJ's all together. The store was in an inconvenient location and the money we were spending driving back and forth and the kinds of foods we ended up buying when we were there finally persuaded us to see past the allure of bulk purchasing. Actually, most of the time we had been buying our groceries at the local grocery store, which was within walking distance, anyway because it was more convenient and allowed us to get something we needed right away (we weren't very good meal planners back then). When all was said and done we probably did save enough money on our wholesale purchases to pay for the membership fee, but I'm certain that we actually ended up spending more than we would have otherwise. And I'm positive that we would have been eating much healthier and we would have saved ourselves the hours at the gym we spent working off the mistake.

To me, this is a myth busted. Maybe for the very diligent shopper with a gigantic freezer and lots of mouths to feed wholesale clubs are a blessing, but for most of us, rarely does buying in bulk pay off. We either end up throwing food away or simply eating more.

My personal perspective is this..

I used to provide for a family of 4. plus cats.

The idea of buying certain items in bulk was realistic.

Toilet tissue, paper towels, Napkins, basic products you use every day. Food items, if on sale, pkgs of chips, treats, cereals, granola bars, (great if you provide lunches everyday)

cup-o-noodles, mac&cheese, canned vegetables, rice, flour, beans, sugar, etc. miscl. cat food, dry or canned, are always good to have on hand..because you always have a 'basic staple in the house to work with" Usually in quanity it is less.

Fresh fruit, bread (can freeze but not very long w/out freezer burn) vegetables, meats etc..should never be bought in bulk unless you can separate out hamburger meat per serving or ribs/chicken, pork chops etc. (I  still do this for myself as I am single and provide for my own self.)

It  makes more sense to buy some things in bulk and repackage if it is cheaper and freeze.

If it will go bad...in a week or so dont over buy.

Other items you might not use frequently dont over buy..takes up storage space.

Sometimes it is just about common sense whatever works for you makes sense you should do...I find that economically we are all making a big mess out of our landfills...there is way too much 'packaging' material used that cannot be used in the referigerator or in the house. Once opened and you place it in your container..its waste.

I find that Soda cartons are not designed to be opened properly...garbage bag boxes, any box that has multiple items in it and you dont want to get rid of container right away it should be an easy open w/no excessive waste.

Answer 5

I can't site a source but basically the concpet is if you buy one large lets say 64 oz bottle of laundry detergent as opposed to 8 8oz bottles then you saved a lot on packaging.  As a result less oil is used by reducing the amount of plasitc needed to produce the same amount of product.  By the same accord less goes to the landfill.

You use less gas by traveling less to the grocery store, and less gas is used transporting it to the shelf.