Storing Refrigerated Produce without Plastic.
After over two weeks, the cabbage was still fresh and usable, showing functional alternatives to plastic exist.
Eating more environmentally often entails more fruits and vegetables in your routine diet. As a result, more produce has to be stored, usually in the refrigerator crisper drawers; but placing exposed food in the drawers shortens the life of the vegetables, especially if the refrigerator has ineffective crisper drawers. Because of this, plastic solutions such as Ziplock bags are often used. These plastic bags however, are not recyclable in some areas.
To remedy this, there are an increasing number of environmental solutions, including an increasing number of beeswax based wrapping products; these products are often advertised as a solution for storing produce in the refrigerator for longer periods of time. To test this, we placed carrots, cabbage, and celery in large beeswax sheets produced by Bee's Wrap, one of the more established manufacturers, to test it's effectiveness.
We found in the test refrigerator crisper drawer without any container, the produce tested tended to soften and lose moisture after thereabouts ten days.
We then placed similar quantities of carrots, cabbage and celery in the Bee's Wrap before placing the produce in the crisper drawer of the same refrigerator; the three different vegetables retained firmness and moisture up to one month after.
The cabbage ( pictured ) and carrots retained shape several weeks longer and the celery browned far less quickly.
It should be noted that the effectiveness of the beeswax wrap often deteriorates over several uses as the sheets wear; at the end of the it's useful lifespan, typically when it is no longer adhesive and can no longer hold a set shape, it can be composted for incorporation into a garden or other mixture.
This results in far less cost in fiscal and environmental terms, as the wraps often last a year, limiting the required expenditure for comparable plastic Ziplock style bags and assuring no waste is made.