Survey: Buy Bulk or Buy Daily?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 10. 8.08
Michelle Kaufmann suggests that a green frugal choice is to buy bulk, "buy foods from the bulk bins at the store. You can find everything from cereals to nuts to candy in the bins. Lots of veggies can be purchased that way, too." Donald Chong is another architect with another idea; he says "small fridges make good cities," that you shouldn't a lot of bulk purchases but instead should respond to the marketplace, the baker, vegetable store and neighbourhood vendor.
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Hi There - We buy grains, beans and the like in bulk but shop at our local farmers' market and farm stands. We grow lots of our own veggies and make our own bread (made with a combination of local flour and flour bought in bulk). We live in walking distance to our Co-op market and shop there nearly daily, looking for local options first. We live in New England so local veggies in winter can be tough to come by but we are lucky enough to live in an area where we can get many items year round because of our dedicated farmers and Co-op markets.
I think buying in bulk saves money and can save on packaging but there is a danger of eating more too (I know from personal experience) then the savings made are lost and even worse you put on weight. I think bulk buying is useful for dry goods if you have somewhere to store them and can apportion them out so you don't use more than normal. I like the idea of responding to seasonal changes and buying from markets etc but for some people who don't live near one buying daily or nearly daily can be too inconvenient. I think this calls for a rethink in how food is offered to the marketplace - local producers markets really are the way to go I think. We have a small fridge in our caravan and I didn't find it any more irksome than our larger fridge at home. In fact it makes you more aware of what's in it and the food is less likely to go off and be wasted. Large fridges can hold so much stuff that it can get "lost" and then be wasted.
My family buys weekly, especially since most of the time when we buy larger amounts of stuff, it tends to go to waste.
Other - I buy bulk cereals, nuts, grains, etc., but we shop nearly daily for produce.
We do a combination of the above. Once a week we go to the local farmers market to stock up on produce and some meats, honey, and cheese. We supplement with a weekly (or bi-weekly depending on how scattered I am) trip to Whole Foods and a monthly trip to Costco for things like toilet paper, Mexican Coke, and large quantities of butter/vanilla/etc for the large quantities of baking we do.
We make everything (except pie crust and bread) from scratch so that makes an impact on how frequently we shop.
Other(a combination): Our family (myself, my husband, and my cat) buys the lot of our groceries twice a month, buying bulk for items like rice, veggies that freeze well, noodles, etc, and produce for the meals that I'll be making soon after that will stay good until I'm able to get to the store again for a small trip for mostly produce.
We ride to the grocery store 2 times a week, to the farmers market on Saturday and plan our meals so theres little waste.
We grow about 1/3 of our own food.
Our biggest expense is organic wine! We buy 6 bottles of bonneterra organic wine once every couple weeks at Whole foods which gets us a 10% discount. We know that as times get tougher this may have to last us longer!
When we buy grains, because we eat wheat free, we can find about 50% of that in the bins and get the rest from the shelves.
we get our seeds from groworganic.com
As a cyclist, I do three different stages.
I'll actually buy bulk non-food items like cat food and litter, laundry detergent and the like in mass quantities in the fall to lessen the number of trips I need to make in the winter.
For food items I will not exercise the squirrel technique, but buy bulk items that will keep at the same time buying more perishable items locally.
However I only buy frozen veg in winter. The travel miles of fresh vegetables is irksome.
I try to all of the above mentioned but with small still limited seasonal farmers' markets and no bulk buying of any great amount I go for our other option much of the time-Big Lots and UGO stores. They aren't necessarily green but certainly nothing wasted on glitz, ironically I have found a supply of frozen organic veggies and snacks.
I would love to have bulk buying available closer than 60 miles away but go every now and then just to remember why I live in a small town.
from the Alabama mountains