Best Plastic-Free Food Prep & Storage
The kitchen gear your food actually touches - cookware, cutting boards, storage containers, and ice cube trays. Grouped because they share one question: what material meets your food, and does it hold up to heat, acid, and time without shedding plastic? Pick a type below, or read the shared rule first.
Why plastic matters here
This is where food and plastic spend the most time together, in two different ways. On the cold side - cutting boards, storage containers, ice trays - the question is the surface: plastic boards shed microplastics as you cut, and plastic containers leach more as they age, warm, or hold acidic food. On the hot side - cookware - the question is coatings: PTFE/PFAS nonstick is a fluoropolymer applied to the exact surface your food cooks on, and it breaks down with heat and wear. Glass, stainless, cast iron, carbon steel, and solid wood sidestep both.
Browse by type
Cookware
Pots and pans for the stovetop and oven - skillets, saucepans, dutch ovens, woks. The focus here…
Cutting Boards
Wood, bamboo, and other boards to replace plastic cutting boards.
Food Storage Containers
Containers for leftovers, meal prep, pantry, fridge, and freezer - the replacement for the plastic…
Ice Cube Trays
Trays and molds for making ice.
What to look for
- What actually touches the food - the cutting surface, the container wall, the pan's cooking surface
- For cookware, "nonstick" almost always means a PTFE/PFAS coating; bare stainless, cast iron, and carbon steel are the escapes
- Plastic storage leaches more with heat, age, and acidic or fatty food - glass and steel don't
- Solid wood and end-grain boards don't shed microplastics into your food the way plastic boards do
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