If you are interested in food storage but don’t want to accumulate lots of wasteful environmentally unfriendly products then this is a good read for you. The sheer amount of food it takes to sustain just one person for a year is a little staggering if you haven’t seen it in person. The average American eats about 2200 pounds of food per year. Combine that number is all the members of your family and you soon realize you’re going to need a lot of food for one year.
It’s not only food you have to be concerned with the storage space and storage containers also take up a lot of space and they can be very wasteful. You don’t want to skimp on using quality materials when storing food because it can ruin your food storage or cause you to get sick if improperly stored. But you do want to make sure you stay as environmentally friendly as possible when storing any amount of food storage, whether it’s for 72 hours or one year.
Use Recyclable Mylar Containers
The first thing you want to make sure you’re doing is storing your food in the best containers possible. Mylar is probably the best way to store food for a long period of time. You may know what Mylar is already because it’s found commonly in the shiny helium balloons. It’s also used to make those cool space blankets which are a good emergency car item.
One way to use Mylar bags is to fill them with your delicious food storage food and then seal them with the standard close iron. Once the bag sealed the food should be good for a long time depending on what it is. Once you use the food inside the bag is 100% recyclable.
Mylar bags meet all the requirements of the clean air act and do not use ozone depleting chemicals in production. There is also no impact on the water supply. This makes using Mylar bags a good choice to reduce your environmental impact.
Grow Your Own Food Storage
Well you’ve got the bags but what will you put in them? Gardening is the second most popular hobby in United States today. Home gardening can be done in very small garden boxes or in large yards. Gardening can save a lot of money and also make less of an environmental impact by reducing the transportation costs when you grow your own food.
Once you grow the food you must then can dehydrate or freeze-dry the vegetables or fruits for storage. This is where those Mylar bags will come in handy. Food can then be economically stored in bulk. Gardening is a great hobby and you might even get some exercise as well.
Collect Rainwater for Storage
Water storage is another big element of overall food storage preparation. A normally active person needs to drink at least a half a gallon of water each day. In addition to drinking water you will also need water for food preparation and hygiene. Plan on at least 1 gallon per day per person for drinking, food preparation, and hygiene.
Turning on the faucet is an obvious way to fill up your water storage containers but if you want to avoid wasting water from the tap there are other ways to gather water. Harvesting rainwater is a nice alternative to provide drinking water for yourself and family.
The easiest way to gather Rainwater is from your roof. You will need to catch the rainwater in tanks and be able to store it safely. Rainwater gathered from your roof may contain high levels of pollutants but that doesn’t mean you can’t use it for watering your garden or flushing the toilet. You can even use rainwater to wash your clothes or take a shower.
Keep Water Safe
In rare emergencies when you’re drinking water supply may run now it is vital that you safely treat your water collected from outdoors before drinking. Drinking contaminated water can cause dysentery typhoid or hepatitis – all of which you want to avoid.
Boiling is the safest method of treating water. If you can’t boil your water then you can use liquid bleach and kill dangerous microorganisms. If you’re really fancy you can use distillation as a water treatment method. This works well for rainwater because distillation involves boiling the water collecting the paper. It leaves any of the large particles or dirt out of the vapor in the bottom of the tank.
Use recyclable Mylar bags to store food safely. Fill those Mylar bags with bulk vegetables or fruits that you grow in your own gardens. And irrigates your garden with rainwater you collect and store. A few simple methods to stay green.
Being environmentally conscious about your food storage choices is very possible. If you have any other ideas or comments about what you do to store food in the green way I would love to hear them.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Lee Flynn is a freelance writer and expert in emergency food preparedness.
love this, never thought about rainwater for toiletry need.
The idea of using the rainwater for toilet flushing is just brilliant! But perhaps there must be installed a special system or something? I’ll look into it, thanks a lot!