Honey, I buy in bulk.

About four years ago, I made some changes to my diet and stopped using sugar in anything I made at home. I did it for health reasons, and the benefits have been great, but I realized quickly that sugar is by far the least expensive sweetener out there. Now when I bake, I use more nutritious sweeteners but they can be very expensive. I found a couple of cost-effective sweet solutions, and it just so happens that they also reduce waste!

My two favorite sweet sources are honey and maple syrup. I’m a big fan of raw honey for a lot of reasons. Besides its health benefits, I love that it is produced locally. We’ve been buying small amounts of honey from our local farmers’ market for quite some time. Once we started using more honey and less sugar, I started buying it in bulk. The apiary sold honey in large pails up to 7-10kg, and the price per kilogram was less.

After going through a couple of 5kg pails (it took us a year, I’m not a honey addict, I swear), I started to wonder what I could do with the empty pails. They are nice and sturdy and completely reusable. I love reusing pails like that for cleaning, gardening or storage, but they were in such perfect condition I wondered if I could just have them refilled.

I asked about refilling and, to my delight, they said yes! The apiary does refill its pails, but only “when they honey flows” in July. So I saved my honey pails till then and brought them in. I had two 5kg pails filled for about $55. That’s when I found out how much the pails themselves cost -- I saved $14 by refilling. That’s the cost of another 2kg of honey!

I keep the large pails in the pantry and refill a wide mouth mason jar for everyday use. I do bring out a big pail if I need a larger amount for making a cake or some other special baking project.

We are also really lucky to know people who go east every year to tap maple syrup. Each year we purchase a 4l glass jug of pure maple syrup; and each year we give them our empty one to reuse. It doesn’t get much less wasteful than that!

Options to buy in bulk and to refill containers are easier to come by with local suppliers. Have you had some successes? Share your stories here.