Zero Waste Pantry Staples
Our zero waste pantry staples are the items that we buy unpackaged in bulk and keep on hand at all times. We have about half of a single under-counter cabinet for food storage, so we don’t keep much more than the basics. Our weekly shopping fills in the gaps.
Our Zero Waste Pantry Staples
1. Grains: brown rice, wild rice, and quinoa
2. Oats: thick-rolled and steel-cut
3. Beans: black, garbanzo/chickpeas, kidney
4. Nuts: cashews, almonds, sometimes peanuts (we tend not to store these since I can’t eat any of them. Instead, my boyfriend makes his own trail mix and takes the whole container to work with him.)
5. Flours: oat (easy to make at home as well), brown rice, white rice, tapioca starch, potato starch, xanthan gum.
6. Dried fruit: typically cherries
7. Coconut: Unsweetened chips and shredded
8. Chocolate chips
9. Seeds: chia, flax, pumpkin, sunflower, hemp
10. Baking: baking soda, sugar, brown sugar
11. Spices: We refill all of our empty spice containers with bulk spices including salt and pepper.
12. Honey: Okay, I haven’t done this yet. But when our current jar runs out we are planning to refill it at the grocery store. It’s also significantly cheeper.
13. Coffee and tea
What We Make With Our Zero Waste Pantry Staples
In a given week we make granola bars, trail mix, and no-bake “cookies” for snacks from our cache. I use the flours to make my own gluten-free blend for baking (and pancakes… all of the pancakes).
Our meals typically build off of the rice or the beans. We use rice at least 1-2 times a week. A quart jar tends to last us 3-4 weeks depending on how often we eat it. (You can see some of our favorite fall/winter meals here.)
More:
Zero Waste Trail Mix
Zero Waste Grocery Shopping Inspiration
Digging Through the Trash
Loose Leaf Tea
In the winter, I always try to keep more than usual around in case of a power outage or other unexpected event. So right now my pantry is truly stuffed with bulk goods! I need to start using some of them up.
That is something I worry about! We have such a tiny space that we don’t keep much on hand. I’m still trying to figure out what keeps a long time but wouldn’t need to be heated or cooked since we have an electric oven/stove. I’m considering putting dried camping meals in our earthquake kit just in case, but none of them seem very appetizing (and they are definitely poorly packaged).