Plastic free: Pasta

There is not a single italian allele in my chromosome map, but still I love pasta. I wish I could say “I’m an athlete and need it to power up”. Alas, the reality is, “I’m an EnviroWoman and just love a good chow down.” Here’s another reality – I’m only 3 weeks into this ‘no plastic’ New Year’s Resolution and I gotta confess — all the plastic in grocery-land is really starting to grate my cheese. Here it is again, rampant in the pasta aisle. The good news — at least I find a few SAINTS. The bad news — there’s something akin to the Madonna/Whore factor goin’ on here.

The SAINTs (Catelli, Splendor, and Safeway house-brand) offer big boxes of plain-jane macaroni and spaghetti with absolutely no ‘hey baby, let me show you what you’re gettin’ plastic packaging. Makes sense — everyone knows what spaghetti and macaroni look like.

But EnviroWoman ain’t lookin’ for plain-jane. No. Nada. Not moi. I want gourmet and specialty BUT plastic-free.

But in the pasta aisle gourmet and specialty have an unholy trinity with plastic. And here’s where the Madonna/Whore factor kicks in — SAINT Catelli and SAINT Safeway are also major SINNERs — using 100% plastic packaging to flagrantly expose their egg noodles, rotini, penne, and other varieties for all the world to see. Yeah, I know, there’s a little SAINT and SINNER in all of us, but folks, ya better get on your knees and say 5 HailMotherEarths to make up for your non-biodegradable transgressions.

Minor kudo-credits to both Primo and Catelli. Though SINNERs, they do minimize the use of plastic to small peek-a-boo windows within their cardboard boxes (just enough to hint and tease, not enough to expose it all). MotherEarth and EnviroWoman thank you — but you could still do better.

I mean, do we really need a window into the soul of a pasta box? In the cracker aisle you’re expected to ‘pick me, pick me’ solely based on a picture on the box. You must have blind faith that ‘what you see on the outside is gonna be what you get on the inside.’ And you know….it works….so, why not on the pasta aisle? YachtingMan and EnviroWoman waxed philosophically about this and concluded that if crackers were 100% packaged in plastic you’d see all the broken cracker bits. We guess blind faith sells more than harsh reality.

Just to punish myself, I head over to the fresh gourmet pasta section (in a former life EnviroWoman must have been an Opus Dei monk). As I expect, all 100% plastic packaging. All 100% off-limits for 2007.

I fight the urge to settle for plain-jane pasta and head on over to my local ‘fresh gourmet pasta’ shop. I drop over $17 for a mere 700g of mezzaluna and agnolotti (that’s $2.55 for just 100g or $11.50 a pound). Mama mia! Those sure are pricey carbs! At least PastaGirl was nice enough to use a cardboard box for packaging.

But does being eco-friendly always have to go hand in hand with eco-expensive? I head on over to the mecca of fresh eating here in LaLaLand — the Granville Island Public Market — and check out Zara’s Deli to test the hypothesis. Let’s see…it’s $1.49 per 100g (~$6.75 a pound). Better, but still way more expensive than the $13 I’d spend at Costco for 1500g of plastic-packaged Olivieri rainbox pasta (about $4/pound, that's cheap, but alas, a SINNER).

Hmmm, plain-jane-pasta isn’t looking so bad after all.

So here’s how things add up:

Category: Pasta
SAINT: Any fresh pasta available through your local deli. Catelli, Splendor and Aime’s Home Grown dried macaroni or spaghetti in large 1-2kg sized boxes
Convenience: 5/10 (if you want fancy and fresh you gotta
trek to your local deli)
Price: Cheap like...well spaghetti...for the boxed dried stuff to Mama-Mia-expensive for the local fresh deli varieties
Quality: The same
SINNER: Safeway Select Verdi brand, Olivieri, Nature’s, Organics, Tinkyada, Granoro, Scarpone’s, Mrs. Leepers, Wacky Mac, Duso’s.

Lessons Learned:

• Choosing a plastic-free lifestyle may force you to get in-touch with your ‘inner-plain-jane’.
• Eco-friendly goes hand in hand with eco-expensive. But after all is said and done, eco-warriors must sometimes throw themselves on their eco-sword-wallets for the greater good of the eco-planet. There sure better be an eco-heaven.