Canning Lids and the Things We Throw Away

Lately, I’ve been thinking about canning lids and the things we throw away without giving them much thought.

The idea came back to me when I opened two jars of beans and two jars of tomatoes to make a batch of chili. By the time I had everything simmering on the stove, four metal canning lids were headed for the trash.

And it bothered me.

Four jars. Four lids. Used once and thrown away.

Not enough to stop making chili, of course. But enough to make me wonder why we have become so accustomed to treating perfectly useful things as disposable.

A standard two-piece canning lid is designed to be used once for canning. The jar is reusable. The ring is reusable. But the flat metal lid … that little piece that actually seals the jar …is considered disposable.

And when you spend much time canning, those little lids can add up.

Even outside of canning season, I find myself noticing them. Open a couple of jars of home-canned food for dinner, and there are more lids in the trash. They aren’t particularly large. They don’t take up much space. But there is something about throwing away something after a single use that simply feels wasteful to me.

Perhaps that’s why I have become so fond of the vintage glass canning lids.

Not because they’re vintage.

I don’t collect old things simply because they’re old, and I’m not trying to create a vintage-looking pantry. I like the glass lids because they work.

They seal well. My failure rate with them has been very low, and when they seal, they have a nice, tight seal. And when I eventually open the jar, I don’t throw the lid away. I wash it and use it again.

Glass. Rubber. Metal.

Simple materials that can be used again and again.

That seems like a perfectly reasonable idea to me.

Of course, vintage glass lids aren’t the only reusable option available today. Newer reusable products exist, and I have examined several of them. But I keep coming back to the same questions.

How well does it seal?

How long will it last?

What is it made of?

And perhaps most importantly, what happens to it when I’m finished with it?

I’m not looking for perfection here.

I don’t imagine I can eliminate every disposable thing from my kitchen. Nor do I think every old-fashioned method was automatically better simply because it came first.

But I do find myself paying more attention to the difference between something reusable and something that is designed to be used for a little while before being replaced.

Those are not quite the same thing.

When Did Disposable Become the Default?

Perhaps part of what bothers me about the canning lids is that disposable products have become so ordinary that we often don’t stop to question them.

We buy things that come with a short life built right into them. Use it once. Throw it away. Buy another.

Sometimes that makes sense. Sometimes there are practical reasons for it.

But sometimes I think we have become accustomed to the idea that replacing things is easier than caring for them, cleaning them, storing them, or using them again.

The old glass canning lids remind me that another way is possible.

They aren’t especially complicated. There is no tiny piece meant to be discarded after one use. The glass lid remains. The rubber ring can be replaced when necessary. The parts have a purpose, and the parts that still work continue to be used.

There is something satisfying about that.

Not because I am trying to recreate someone else’s kitchen from another era, but because I appreciate things that do their job well and don’t immediately become trash.

Small Things Add Up

Four canning lids probably don’t seem like much.

And perhaps, by themselves, they aren’t.

But homemaking is made up of small things.

The little things we buy over and over again. The things we use once and replace. The things that fill a drawer, a cupboard, or eventually a trash can.

Sometimes paying attention to one small thing leads us to a larger question.

Is there another way to do this?

Not necessarily a more expensive way. Not necessarily a more complicated way. Just a way that makes a little more sense.

That’s where I am with canning lids.

I did try one of the modern reusable options. I liked the idea of being able to use the lids again, and when they worked, they worked well. But they weren’t dependable enough for me. Sometimes I had a good seal on every jar. Other times, the failure rate was more than 50 percent.

For something I am trusting to keep home-canned food safely sealed on a shelf, that isn’t good enough.

So I’m going back to the glass lids.

They have their own inconvenience, of course. When those glass lids seal, they are on. The seal is wonderfully tight—which is exactly what I want when I’m canning—but opening them can take a little effort.

And that’s the practical problem I’m trying to solve now.

I’m looking for a simple way to remove those tightly sealed glass lids without struggling with them or having to resort to whatever happens to be handy in the kitchen at the moment. If I can find a tool or method that makes opening them easier, I think I may have found the reusable canning lid that makes the most sense for me.

That’s really what this has come down to.

Not finding the newest product. Not choosing something because it’s fashionable or because it promises to be more environmentally friendly. And not choosing vintage simply because I like old things.

I want something that works.

Something that seals dependably. Something made from materials I’m comfortable using. And something that doesn’t need to be thrown away after every jar is opened.

The glass lids have already answered most of those questions for me.

Now I just need to figure out the opening part.