Where to buy Canning Jars?

Glass canning jars are absolutely ridiculous here in Belgium. I garden and I am going to scale up my gardening next year, so I need to get into canning and preserving again.

If you live in the US, you could get a 12 pack of standard mason jars in a store for https://www.target.com/p/ball-16oz-12pk-glass-regular-mouth-mason-jar-with-lid-and-band/-/A-12794405 under $15.

Here, any sort of glass jar is no cheaper than 20€ for 6 online and in stores it is often 5-10€ per jar, depending on size!! That is 300% more expensive on the cheap end here. It is not super sustainable to have to spend 200 euros on glass jars to can your extra fruit and vegetables.

Is there a secret to finding reasonably-priced glass canning jars that some people have found? I would reuse glass jars that I get from the store, but you are not supposed to reuse the lids because they degrade and will let in harmful bacteria and let things oxidize.

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21 comments

Why buying new jars if you can reuse the old ones. In my family (or maybe in Germany in general) we use any kind of jar to make marmelade for example. When you buy:
Store marmelade
Jared pickles
Nutella
Smothies
Or anything in a jar you put it in the dishwasher and use it again to make marmelade or whatever you wan't to put in a jar.
- Because jars that commercial food comes in are cost-optimized to the point that they're too fragile to reliably reuse for canning. (That's why, for example, the Classico pasta sauce manufacturer says not to reuse those jars, even though they appear to be normal Mason-style continuous-thread jars.)
  Also, they usually use lug-style lids that a home canner can't easily deal with. Canning isn't just "put food in jars," you know. It's about creating an airtight seal in a sterile environment so that the food can be stored long-term without refrigeration. There are actual steps you have to follow to do it right.
  
  I don't can foods so I'm not familiar with the process but it seems like a waste to throw away the one jars to buy new ones. To tell someone what to do without knowing about the topic isn't something I wanted to do. I just wanted to bring up the idea that came to my mind.
  
  It definitely is a waste, but companies have spent millions of euros in packaging design to make it that way so you buy more.
  
  We produce the vast majority of our own food. Classico jars are awesome until they changed the tread pattern so we can't use the new ones with mason style lids. I have around 200 of these and use them regularly. Have been for over a decade on some. Those companies are full of shit and want you to buy more. The odd one will bust in the pressure canner but that is no different than mason or Bernardin jars that we buy off the shelf in Canada. I have never had one bust on a water bath in around 10-15 years of using them for various goods. We've even used them quite a lot for goods we sell from our homestead.
  
  Classico jars are awesome until they changed the tread pattern so we can't use the new ones with mason style lids.
  Yeah, I remember when that happened a few years back. Enough people (including me) complained that they pretty quickly changed it back. 😁
  (I only buy the extra-large 32oz jars from Costco these days, so I sure hope they didn't fuck it up again for the regular grocery-store 24oz size!)
  
  They did. At least in Canada the 750ml jar. We don't buy pasta sauce anymore but lots of folks give us jars instead of throwing them out.
  
  I guess if the Canadian jar is actually different (really 750ml, not a slightly-overfilled 24oz) then the US-market complaints wouldn't apply. Sorry Canadians apparently didn't care quite as much.
  
  It depends on the jar quite a bit. I've reused jam jars without issue (for jam). Many of them are quite thick and the lids sturdy. I wouldn't be using pasta ones though. I agree they're flimsy.

21 comments