My mom used to make juice from concentrate. It’s still the cheapest. Way cheaper than buying cartons or bottles.
It’s easy to get tricked into buying “fruit drink” or “punch”, but once I learned to buy nothing that does not say “100% juice” I was OK.
The problem is the waste: plastic, metal and cardboard in one seemingly inseparable package. How to recycle all those components?
These frozen containers are much more efficient packaging than a carton, jug or bottle. If only we could separate them into their component parts. But WAIT, we CAN!
Here’s how.
Step 1: make the juice.
Step 2. Recycle the plastic strip that kept the lid on and the metal top.
Step 3: Submerge the container in water so that the cardboard gets soggy. You don’t have to submerge it all the way. Leave it like this for a few hours and it will be plenty soggy.
5. Finally, when the cardboard is good and soggy, it is easy to tear the whole thing apart and separate out the plastic (the same kind of plastic in the plastic bags we recycle all the time, am I right?), the metal bottom and the cardboard. I put the still-soggy cardboard in with the rest of our cardboard recycling–it will dry out very soon (I’m lazy like that).
6. Perhaps this video will help!
Voila! Cheap, sustainable juice!
Now, how can I ensure that the manufacturer is using sustainable practices producing the juice?