Hey all,
Lately I’ve been working on going vegan, which has meant that I’ve been using beans as an ingredient a lot more in my cooking. I use just about any beans for hummus, I’ve made roasted chickpeas with my air fryer and want to start making falafel, I want to start adding black beans to my tacos, I use mung beans for omelettes, you get the drift.
Anyway, I was recently thinking about the packaging the beans come in. This came to mind since I’ve been re-evaluating the products I purchase and how to put my dollar where my heart is, and in looking at where my canned beans come from, I started thinking about the packaging of the dried beans I have.
While not all the dried beans I have include info about the ability to recycle the packaging, Walmart for all their flaws made things easy with some dried beans I got in the past and has the “Not yet recyclable” label from how2recycle.info, and I can guess that the other brands I have are in the same boat as they all appear to have the same packaging.
In comparison, I already know for certain that the cans for canned beans can be recycled, and the labels are just paper, meaning the same case for them. Now reading things from what I know it appears as if using canned beans is more environmentally suitable than dried, assuming both are sourced domestically, but I want to ask if there’s anything I might be forgetting here that could also factor into things that I may not be aware of. On top of this, some recipes specifically call for dried beans, and I’d have trouble substituting them with canned product, namely with falafel and my vegan omelettes.
Should I make the switch? Any and all input is greatly appreciated.
Transporting heavy, wet beans in a can with a diesel truck to your store probably makes the dried beans a better choice.
Would you say this would likely still be the case if it was domestic? For reference if it helps I’m in Canada, and I can’t say I know where exactly in the country the beans I buy are grown and canned. Could be in Ontario for all I know which is essentially across the country for me.
Yes. With dried beans most of the weight is beans. With canned beans most of the weight is water and metal.
You can ship way more dried beans for the same amount of fuel. Not to mention the energy required to make the cans and run the canning facility.
Dried beans have less packaging per pound of food, less processing, less transportation costs, and you know where you source the water, cooking fuel and other ingredients when you cook them.
If there are any grocery stores near you that cater towards immigrant families, you can almost certainly find a substantial variety of dry beans and whole grains sold in bulk (usually up to something like 50 pounds) in burlap or paper.
I dream of a time where there’s a store in most towns that just sell bulk items in a “bring-your-own-container” situation. I know they exist some places, but obviously aren’t widespread
In the 1970s, growing up near Toronto, my family was part of a food co-op where my mother would go and work a half day a week, and we would buy food from the co-op that was brought in in bulk, and we used our own containers to bring it home.
Nowadays, there is a chain of bulk stores in Canada called the Bulk Barn hundreds of bulk goods, including many things you can find nowhere else. Typically, you use their containers, but they have a promotion where if you bring your own you get 15% off.
There are, but I’m in a unique situation with program I’m in where I’m only able to shop at a certain grocer as I currently get gift cards to assist with grocery shopping.
Would these be similar to the packages for rice you find at the store? I’ve heard about people bringing their own stuff to the bulk section, but I wouldn’t have a clue if that’s allowed where I live since I’ve only recently learned that that’s something people do. Growing up I don’t my family used the bulk section of the store so much as once.
Where I live, there isn’t really a “bulk section” in any of the “normal” grocery stores. Just at the front of the store there will be giant sacks of dry staple ingredients like beans, rice, and other grains available for individual purchase. No guarantees of course, but you might also be surprised to find that it’s more common than you expected.
Side note: one thing to consider with the bring your own container stuff is everything you buy in those kinds of stores came in these sacks too, so it doesn’t really reduce overall waste compared to just buying the whole sack itself.
So I’m no expert to start. If you’re looking at “environmentally friendly” as a whole, its complicated. How much/many emissions are produced recycling and making new cans? How much is made for the stupid plastic bag that could probably be a cardboard box? The actual amount of plastic is pretty small, but it will exit until the plastic eating bacteria start to take over the world.
Personally, I’m not entirely zero waste, so take this for what it is. I would just use the dried beans for now. The amount of waste that produced is negligible compared to all the dumb shit corporations produce (which I can understand also negates most of what we do as individuals). Unless you’re a purist, I would get rid of the big sources of waste first, leave small things last, but in the mean time push for local companies to switch what they do, convince the people where you work to use different packaging, or do the same for local government.
I’m also open to hearing others’ opinions.
I would probably call myself a purist. Then again, I think that’s fairly easy for me since off hand, the biggest source of waste I can think of in my case is likely food waste currently, and I’m trying to improve on that since I’m relatively new to regular home cooking, and am in the middle of a major diet change.
Worst case scenario if the recycling of the cans does have considerable emissions, I could also probably purchase carbon offsets, mind you I need to read more about those and how they work and that would be for when I’m in a better financial situation.
That’s fair, I honestly never looked into offsets personally beyond what they claim to use as big corps.
I lean towards cans personally, for tenderness reasons.
Be aware that most cans have a very thin internal plastic coating (same for soda cans), the discovery of which was precipitated by wondering why metal cans kept pronouncing they were BPA free on the label.
I am not a vegan or zero waste type, but note that a fair number of cans do have a plastic lining, and/or labels that aren’t as recyclable as you might think.
Don’t necessarily know the packaging for dried beans in your area, but I know where I live the packaging is plastic. Metal packaging like cans are always going to be more environmentally friendly compared to plastic packaging. From my experience canned beans can be used for recipes that require dried, but they just take less cook time
Cans have a plastic lining. Considering how much larger of a quantity of beans fit in a 1 pound bag, I’m not actually convinced that cans uses less plastic.
The low waste solution would be for OP to grow their own beans and dehydrate them or jar them.
That level of purism starts becoming onerous though.
Sorry, I should have made it clear. Yes they appear to be a non-recyclable plastic package for the brands sold at the grocers I visit.
Go cans then. A neat way to reuse cans is you can turn them into little flower pots. Use them to grow your own mini spice garden in a window seal or something
When shipping and transporting most products are wrapped in a ton of plastic film så it’s not really that simple, i have no idea of how they were packaged when shipped.
Right, thanks for noting that. I remember working in grocery they’d often receive product in plastic wrap to keep it stable on the skids.
Mind you with my experience in the back of the store, while I never worked receiving, I’m fairly certain both the canned and dried beans both arrived to the store the same way, as it was usually an assortment of boxes rather than a skid purely of one product unless it was a feature or display.
Where I live, some beans come bulk. There is a large bin filled with beans that arrive in a cloth sack and you get as much or as little as you like. You can even bring your own reusable bags. But it is only for pinto, Anasazi, and sometimes garbanzo. Ask of any of the stores have something like that.
My guess is buying one big bag of dried beans is probably way better than cans and cans of canned ones. They sell 5kg bags at the grocery store here but ymmv
For chickpeas, I’m fairly certain they sell them in 11 kg bags at store I visit.
I wish that was the case here. I might be able to hunt around better, but I’ve only found dried chickpeas at two stores and the both only sell 1 lb bags (I think)
