Safety Concerns About Plastic Food Storage Containers

Enlarge Image Image Gallery "Planet Home" is a guide to maintaining every room of your home, from the kitchen to the garage, in a natural, nontoxic way. Jeffrey Hollender offers straightforward advice, comprehensive checklists, quick tips and resources while revealing the hidden repercussions of daily routines that most of us take for granted. Photo Courtesy Clarkson Potter

The following is an excerpt from Planet Home: Conscious Choices for Cleaning and Greening the World You Care About Most by Jeffrey Hollender with Alexandra Zissu (Clarkson Potter, 2010). The excerpt is from a chapter 2: The Kitchen. 

Storing Safely 

Plastics are everywhere in the kitchen. And it seems that there are news reports daily on the hazards of hormone-disrupting chemicals found in plastics, which get into our food, beverages, and even baby formula. Although there are plastics on the market that are generally considered safe to use with food, there is a growing body of evidence showing that plastics need to be treated gently, washed by hand, and never, ever placed in a microwave, where their chemicals leach into what’s being heated, especially things with a high fat content, like meat and cheese. Plastics are ubiquitous because they’re supposed to be easy, but none of that sounds easy. Plastics are also derived from a nonrenewable resource (petroleum), and not all kinds are recyclable. Even the ones that are recyclable often wind up overcrowding landfills or floating around in our waterways. Both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans now have great garbage patches. Aquatic life is currently ingesting broken-down bits of these plastics, some of which contain those hormone-disrupting chemicals. Humans are then eating fish that have eaten these plastics. It’s an ugly cycle.

It might be difficult (but not impossible) to avoid plastic packaging at the supermarket. When it comes to storing your leftovers at home, why not bypass plastics altogether— baggies, wrap, or containers—and use reliable, renewable, and reusable containers made of glass, stainless steel, and lead-free ceramic instead. This way you won’t have to worry about what’s migrating into your food or hope the plastic currently considered safe doesn’t become tomorrow’s must-avoid. Glass storage containers are widely available, or you can use what you already have in your kitchen: old jelly, peanut butter, or pickle jars. Glass can also go in the freezer—just make sure to leave enough room for liquid to expand. Recycle your old plastic containers if you can, or use them to store nonfood items (screws, coins, pencils). If they’re made from a safe plastic, they can also be reused as bath toys. If you’d like a replacement for plastic wrap, try a reusable wrap, or opt for wax paper coated in non-genetically-modified (GM) soy wax instead of petroleum-derived wax.