Sustainable Teas and Bulk Coffee Beans

If you’re like me, nothing beats the simple pleasure of savoring a good cup of coffee or tea. The smell of it brewing, the warmth of the cup in your hands, and that first delicious sip—there’s just something magical about it. But you can take this moment of joy even further by making your drink in a waste-free way with bulk coffee beans and loose leaf teas.

Ditch the Wasteful Coffee Pods

Pod coffee makers are convenient, but all the waste associated with single-use pods takes away from the experience. Fortunately, there are sustainable alternatives that are just as quick and satisfying, without the environmental impact.

At Wasteless Pantry, we offer coffee beans in bulk without plastic packaging. You can bring your own container, and we even have grinders on-site so you can enjoy freshly ground beans every time. Once you’ve got your coffee beans home, be sure to store them at room temperature—not in the fridge! (A common myth debunked by our friends at Yahava.)

How to Brew Waste-Free Coffee

There are several sustainable brewing methods to choose from, but my personal favorite is the stovetop espresso maker. It’s a classic, zero-waste option that brews smooth, rich coffee in just a few minutes. Here’s how to do it:

Fill the bottom chamber of your espresso maker with water.
Add 1-2 teaspoons of ground coffee beans per person into the basket.
Twist on the top, place it on the stove, and heat for around 5 minutes.
Enjoy a fresh, aromatic coffee ready for your next break!

This method eliminates the need for disposable coffee pods, filters, or packaging, allowing you to indulge guilt-free.

Try Loose Leaf Teas for a Zero-Waste Brew

If you’re a tea lover, making the switch to loose leaf tea is an easy and sustainable change. At Wasteless Pantry, we offer a wide range of loose leaf teas that you can buy in bulk with your own containers, reducing unnecessary packaging.

For an even lower waste option, try growing your own herbal teas at home. Fennel, chamomile, mint, raspberry leaf, and lemongrass are all easy to grow and add beauty to your garden.

When it’s time for tea, a simple strainer over your mug works perfectly, or you can use a tea pot or plunger for larger batches. Not only do loose leaf teas taste fresher, but the leftover tea leaves make excellent compost for your garden.

The Benefits of Buying from Wasteless Pantry

By purchasing your coffee and tea from Wasteless Pantry, you’re reducing packaging waste, supporting sustainable shopping practices, and ensuring that your daily brew is both delicious and eco-friendly. Plus, you can bring your own containers, making it easy to buy just what you need, without the waste!

Refill Your Own Container

Imagine this: You go to the store, pick up your cut of meat or deli items, and everything is packaged in plastic bags or trays. Once you’re home, you use the food and throw away the packaging—straight into the landfill. Unfortunately, this is a common practice, and Western Australians are among the largest producers of waste per person in the world. But there’s a simple alternative to this wasteful cycle: refill your own container!

Why Refill Your Own Container?

By bringing your own reusable containers to the store, you can dramatically reduce single-use plastic waste. Instead of contributing to the mountains of waste created by plastic bags, trays, and packaging, you can eliminate unnecessary rubbish altogether. Plus, it makes storing food easier at home since containers stack neatly and can go straight from the fridge or freezer to the table.

How to Refill Your Own Container

Refilling your own container is easier than you might think. Here’s how you do it:

Bring Your Clean Container: Choose a food-grade container like glass jars, metal tins, or reusable plastic containers. It just needs to be clean and ready to use.
Hand Over Your Container: When at the deli, butcher, or bulk food store (like Wasteless Pantry), hand your container to the assistant and ask them to place your food item inside.
Tare the Weight: The assistant will place your container on the scale, press the TARE button, and set the scale to zero before they start filling. This way, you’ll only pay for the weight of your food—not the container.
Weigh and Label: Your container is filled, weighed, and the price is printed or noted.
Store at Home: Once you’re home, your food is already in a container, reducing packaging waste and making storage a breeze. No extra steps required!

Where to Refill Your Container

Many stores are already familiar with this process. You can also try your local deli or butcher—just ask if they’re happy to help. If you’re nervous about trying it for the first time, you can always say, “Jeannie and Amanda from Wasteless Pantry suggested I try this!”

Why It’s Worth It

By bringing your own containers, you’re not only reducing plastic waste but also saving time. Stackable containers are easier to store in the fridge or freezer, and deli items can be served directly from the container, making mealtime simpler. Plus, this small change is an important step in planning and reducing food waste.

Take the Challenge!

We challenge you to bring your own container for just one purchase this week. Snap a photo of your zero-waste shopping experience and share it on our Facebook page. Let us know if you’d do it again!

Reusable Produce Bags

One of the simplest ways to reduce your landfill contribution is to use reusable produce bags. At Wasteless Pantry, Jeannie and I frequently get curious and positive comments about these bags whenever we shop. The idea is simple: instead of reaching for disposable plastic bags for your fruit, veggies, bread rolls, and bulk goods, bring along lightweight, reusable bags. More and more people are getting on board with this idea, and it’s easy to see why!

What Are Reusable Produce Bags?

Reusable produce bags are typically made of mesh or cloth, and they serve the same purpose as disposable plastic bags, but without the waste. These bags are perfect for:

Fruits and vegetables
Bread rolls
Nuts and legumes
Snack foods

Lightweight yet strong, they are perfect for carrying your groceries home without worrying about anything tearing through the bag. I’ve easily fit up to 2kg of fruit into a single bag, and they compact down so small that you can always keep a few in your handbag. This means you won’t be caught out if you make an unexpected stop at the store.

Why Use Reusable Produce Bags?

Reduce Plastic Waste: By avoiding plastic bags, you immediately cut down on single-use plastic waste. That means fewer plastic bags in landfill or ending up in the ocean.
Eco-Friendly & Durable: These bags are far stronger than disposable plastic bags and can be used over and over again. Plus, they’re washable! If they get dirty, just toss them in the washing machine.
Convenient: Reusable produce bags are lightweight and easy to use. At stores with dedicated label machines, you can stick the label directly on the bag and remove it later. They also fold up easily, making them a breeze to carry.
Cost-Efficient: Investing in a few reusable produce bags will save you money in the long run. There’s no need to keep buying plastic bags, and you’ll be contributing to a cleaner environment.

How to Use Reusable Produce Bags

Using reusable produce bags is easy! Here’s how you can incorporate them into your next shopping trip:

Grab Your Bags: Make sure you have your reusable bags with you before heading to the store. Keep a few in your car or handbag so you’re always prepared.
Fill Up: When shopping for fruits, veggies, nuts, or bulk foods, place your items directly into the reusable bag. The lightweight material doesn’t affect the scale reading, so you only pay for the weight of the produce.
Label: If your store has a label machine, stick the label on the bag. It’s easy to remove afterward.
Store: Once home, you can either keep your produce in the bag or transfer it to your usual containers. When the bags get dirty, simply add them to your washing.

Why Shop at Wasteless Pantry?

At Wasteless Pantry, we offer a variety of reusable produce bags, which are eco-friendly and durable. By refilling your pantry with our plastic-free products, you’re supporting a zero-waste lifestyle. You can also make your own bags at home from lightweight fabrics like muslin wraps, which I did.

Shopping with produce bags means that when I get home, all I have bought is food—no unnecessary waste. It’s a small step that has a big impact on reducing landfill waste, and even the kids love helping to fill the bags rather than dealing with fiddly plastic ones.

And if you do get caught without your reusable bags, consider using a paper mushroom or potato bag as a compostable alternative.

Sustainable Package Free Food: It all starts somewhere

Have you ever woken up one day and thought to yourself, “Wow, how did I get here? I love it!”
I have.
One day I woke up and sat down to a breakfast of homemade bread using flour from a local mill, yeast I brought package free, topped with WA butter and my own marmalade made from oranges grown just down the road that were offered for free.
And that was just breakfast.

I should explain why that was such a big deal to me…

For years I have wanted to be someone who lives sustainably, healthily and also got to enjoy life. I recycled most of the time, I brought and ate lots of vegetables, we have a rain water tank. But I was forever dreading taking out our overflowing smelly bin. We cooked using packet mixes and jars of sauces, lots of canned foods and frozen vegetables. I had a garden of sorts but didn’t really spend much time there. I drank diet soft drinks and went to the gym but struggled with my weight anyway. We used a lot of disposable stuff and our house was full of things that took up space but rarely got used. I was considering getting more storage. I assumed that the food I was eating was good for me, because that is what the advertising said. I assumed that you had to buy everything in plastic, because that’s all I saw on offer. I assumed that doing what everyone else was doing was the right thing, because if I recycled then that made up for all the other things that I did that weren’t such a good idea. I assumed that living this way would make me happy, otherwise why would everyone be doing it?

And then I saw something.

It was just a little thing really.

My cousin posted on Facebook that her family were going to eat local for a month.

Just a month.

I thought myself, that’s an interesting thing to do. And then I read a little on local eating. And I read a little more on how some of our food is produced. And I read a little more on what it takes to get my processed dinner from imported ingredients all the way to my plate. And I thought to myself, well that doesn’t seem quite right. So I started looking at the food I was eating and slowly started researching what options I had. I made small changes until those small changes seemed to gain their own momentum. I took the challenge for a month, enjoyed my food, got excited about gathering my groceries, and got healthier in the meantime because it is easier and cheaper to make your own from local than to try and find locally processed and packaged food.

Once you get started, it is hard to go back.

I was learning more and more about my food, out of curiosity and excitement at my finds, creations and the skills I was developing. And then I stumbled across Plastic Free July. Wow, that really dealt me a blow! Becoming aware of how disposable our lives have become was a shocker! To be honest, it was daunting and a bit depressing. I learnt things that whilst I don’t want to forget, I sometimes wished I didn’t know. Mainly though I was thinking “How the heck am I going to do anything about this one!” But I took the challenge, I didn’t go for everything, just the big four – disposable cups, water bottles, straws and bags. I remembered my reusable shopping bags, I said ‘No’ to straws, I took my own travel mug and reused my stainless steel water bottle. I watched documentaries, I read blogs and I found ‘Zero Waste Home’. I would encourage every single person to read this blog or book. In the beginning, I’ll admit I thought to myself “Is this chick for real!!” They said ‘No’ to so many things and her house is really, really, really sparse. I mean, seriously people, not even a photo frame. But you start getting to the crux of the story behind it and I could see myself finding a better way of doing things. What if I did stop with the disposables and just had reusables? What if I did stop buying things that I don’t really need? What if I only had one set of dinnerware? Did having more really make my life better?

And so I started living in a way that actually was authentic. Those things that I valued – sustainability, health and enjoyment of life – were now more possible. Less stuff meant easier cleaning, more space and less feeling overwhelmed in my own home. Reusable containers, produce bags and shopping bags meant that I could feel better about my contribution to the next generation, created less waste, saved time and got me supporting local and independent businesses. I get to live hands-on.

Fortunately, I have the support of friends and family who might not live this way themselves but are open to the idea. They try to use less disposables when I’m around, tell me how they cooked something from scratch or get excited about a new local option that would be right up my alley. Whether they want to believe it or not I’ve seen the seed of change in them too, but we all find our own path and pace with these things. Sometimes we get lucky and find someone who gets what we are on about almost completely – and that’s when ideas like opening Wasteless Pantry are born. My dear friend Jeannie read the ‘Zero Waste Home’ book I leant her and was struck by the idea of living waste free too. We tried using the bulk stores available, however local options that met the mark seem to be lacking. So here we are!

Year: 2014