For the storage of frozen fruit(for my smoothies) I'll pretty much wash them and use them indefinitely until they rip open and become unusable. I have to say, for being a disposable item, they last for a long time. We are still on the same box of zips that we purchased 6 years ago.
I reuse them as often as I can unless super gunky or tear. Any ziploc that I do get rid of, I recycle with my plastic bags. If they have the hard plactic zip tab, I pull that off and toss it with my hard plastic recycle.
Ditto to everything above. We wash & re-use ours as often as possible. If they get a small hole in them, we tape over the hole to get some more life out of them.
My friend, among other things, once worked in PVC R&D lab. His supervisor held advanced degrees in the plastics field. So he was knowledgable and well read on his field. He only used glass containers for his lunches. I'm all for reusing when feasable, and will likely reuse a zip lock a couple times, but as they age plastics will start leaching chemicals.
Most likely you are worried about BPA. Recent studies have shown that wear and tear is not a factor in leaching. Heat, on the other hand, is a problem: Heat causes chemical to leach from plastic - USATODAY.com Tom
i rarely use them. i have a few sets of "tupperware" like containers that literally come in every conceivable shape and size and so that is what i use. eventually they do wear out, lids get lost or they simply dont see well enough, so they do get tossed. to be honest with ya, wondering what would be better. some containers i have had for years and have been used at least hundreds of times, other ones the not so useful sizes, cheaper plastic, etc., i can easily believe may have only been used a handful of times. plus with a 2 year old, keeping it all together is now a bit of a challenge.
on the glass thing. i actually tried that for a while. but they were heavy and easy to break. so i went to prepackaged foods, mostly soups i could open, heat up in regular bowl and eat, so used no packaging at all. that actually worked for the most part and i still do it at least twice a week now. but soup gets old after a while and try as i might, it was hard to have enough variety. i also tried regular ceramic or glass containers that came with lids. didnt work. leaks were common especially if in a bag with other items. as far as leeching chemicals, i personally dont feel extremely threatened by BPA, BHA , and any other "B" thing. just keep them out of the microwave (i stopped doing that years ago only because the lids stopped fitting right if nuked too much) the only time i really use plastic bags is when space is a premium. will do it for picnics and that kind of stuff, but we have a case of plastic bags given to us a few years ago that had like 6 boxes of bags in it with like 50 to a box. pretty sure we still have 3-4 un opened boxes left...and ya, i admit, use em once and toss em. i took an inventory of the kitchen, garage (where 80% of our food is stored) etc, and of the 5 plastic bags in use right now, all 5 are being used to store small parts to various things we own...ya know, screws and such
I try to reuse them if they are not dirty but honestly, think it is worse to waste the water washing and rinsing them than to just get a new bag (or to use some sort of other container than washes/rinses more easily). By my estimation, it takes a good half a quart of H2O or more to thoroughly wash and rinse the bags gallon sized bags. And since I use hot water, it uses energy too.
We only use plastic bags for meat and bread. We buy meat in bulk at Costco and repackage into ziploc bags. (1 serving of meat per quart-size bag, all the quart-size bags into one gallon bag) These bags do not get recycled because they are #4 plastic my local recycling centers have recently banned all plastics except for #1 and #2. We bake our own bread and put the loaf in a gallon size bag. This bag is reused until the seal stops working. Everything else goes into reusable containers. We currently have plastic containers but are replacing them with glass as they wear out.
Depends on what was in it. It's hard to sufficiently clean the inside of a used plastic bag without wasting more water and energy than the bag is worth.
i don think to idea behind the thread is aimed at the cost of buying verses reusing bags or what uses the most resources. so the question of what is used to wash whatever you use is a non issue, because you will wash any alternative method or simply toss what you have after one use right now there are massive floating garbage islands out in the oceans that are several thousand square miles and the primary component is these discarded plastic bags. they literally will last forever. eventually wave action breaks them up into little pieces that "less than bright" fish tend to eat which is probably not the best diet choice. so we are stuck with the question of the obvious convenience these bags provide verses the hassle of another option. i personally think that plastic grocery store bags should either be banned (not likely) or force stores to charge 25 cents a piece to use them (result will be the same as a ban except this option would be much more effective)
I try to reuse (and not use plastic bags at all) but sometimes it's just a matter of convenience. I reuse the bags if the contents were dry (pita chips, bread, etc.) but if I use one to freeze pasta sauce, then there's no way I can see to reuse one. I try to use glass containers as much as possible. I agree on the plastic grocery bags. The only commercial store bag that I really like and reuse over and over again is Target store bags. I get several uses out of them as they are large and thick (which is probably a bad thing for the environment). Sigh.. can't win either way.
It's not just heat that leads to leaching. Bleach is known to cause it in polycarbonate. I personally am not worried about the leaching, but it seems more effort than it's worth once it involves washing them. We tend to use the semi-disposable containers more often.
