Anchor Hocking Stackable Glass Jars with Bamboo Lids (1-Quart, Set of 4)

Glass Jars With a Natural Bamboo Top

These are the pantry jars that look as good on the counter as they work inside the cabinet.

 The set is four 1-quart square glass jars from Anchor Hocking, an American glassmaker working in Lancaster, Ohio since 1905, topped with natural bamboo lids. The glass is made in the USA and, being glass, will not warp, stain, hold smells, or leach into your food. The square jars are designed to stack, with a lid that is indented so the next jar nests securely on top, and the clear glass and wide mouth make it easy to see and scoop pasta, cereal, coffee, tea, grains, nuts, or beans.

The bamboo lid is the appeal here, a natural, renewable material instead of a plastic snap-top.

One honest detail worth knowing: the bamboo lid has an inner seal ring that grips the outside of the jar's rim to keep contents dry, and that seal is plastic, not bamboo. The thing is, it seals over the outside of the glass mouth and does not touch your food, your food sits against glass, and the bamboo forms the visible top. So this is a largely natural, plastic-reduced jar rather than a strictly zero-plastic one, with the only plastic being a seal that never contacts what you store.

True Shift Score: 8.5 / 10

This is our own assessment, not a lab result or a certification.

It scores high for pairing inert, made-in-USA glass with a natural bamboo lid and a smart stackable design, an attractive, largely plastic-free way to store dry goods, with the food sitting on glass and a renewable material forming the lid. It is held just short of the top by two honest points: the bamboo lid's inner seal ring is plastic, though it grips the outside of the jar and never touches food, and the bamboo lids are hand-wash only while the jars are dishwasher safe. For a beautiful, near-plastic-free pantry set, it is an excellent choice.

The Honest Tradeoffs

A few practical notes.

1. The bamboo lids are hand-wash only, while the glass jars are dishwasher safe, so cleanup is a two-track affair, normal for any wood or bamboo lid. 

2. The seal keeps dry goods dry, but this is a pantry canister, not an airtight, leakproof container for wet leftovers, so keep it to dry storage. 

3. And as with all glass, the jars are sturdy but breakable and heavier than metal or plastic, which is the trade for an inert, see-through material that lasts. 

4. If a strictly plastic-free seal matters to you, a glass lid with a silicone gasket avoids even the seal ring, at the cost of the bamboo look.

How We Evaluate Food Storage

We look at four things, and none is a lab score:

1. Whether the food-contact surface is inert and won't leach

2. Stain, or hold odors, what the lid is actually made of, since that is where plastic hides in most "glass" storage

3. How well it seals and holds up across the fridge, freezer, microwave, and dishwasher, 

4. And how durable it is over years of use. 

The real shift in food storage is getting your food off plastic and onto glass.