Flash in the Pan

Plastic bags for food products may be convenient packaging, but they can be annoying. Once open you now either fold the top of the bag down and use a clip to keep it closed or transfer everything to a container. If you can’t bear washing that new home for the shredded cheese, you might consider using a QuickSeal. It’s a re-closable plastic zipper, like you find on storage backs and some food packaging.

Neese Products, the manufacturer, sent me some samples to test. They come in two sizes – medium for bags up to 8-inches and large for bags up to 11-inches. Each QuickSeal looks like a sealable plastic bag with the bottom cut off and replaced by two flaps. Each flap has adhesive covered with a plastic strip. You place the QuickSeal on a flat surface, remove one of the plastic strips to expose the adhesive, and then carefully place the food bag (or even a box, as you can see in the photo) on top of it so that the bag’s open top is inside the QuickSeal. Then you expose the adhesive on the other flap and press that down on top. The QuickSeal effectively encapsulates the top of the bag to the edges; the parts of the flap that extend beyond the bag end up adhering to each other. Now when you open and close the QuickSeal, you effectively open and close the bag itself. It’s an idea slick in its simplicity. Given that you can only use a QuickSeal, that also means that you’re eventually sending even more plastic to landfills. Also, as the QuickSeals cost $1.29 for three large and three medium or $3.49 for ten each of the two sizes, that means you throw away either 17.5 or 21.5 cents every time you use one. Maybe washing that reusable plastic food container isn’t so large a burden after all.