Look at your home waste and you will see that it is mostly packaging. Once you have removed the food waste and paper what is left is mostly single use plastic bottles, cans, trays... Therefore, if you minimise the packaging in your shopping you will be generating less waste. Easy, uh?
Unpackaged is one of
these shops in Europe that allow you to shop without having to bring home a bunch of single-use recipients and plastic bags that only harm the planet and fatten our bins.
Unpackaged was founded in 2006 by Catherine Conway in the belief that there is a better way to sell products, so that customers can do the right thing – for themselves and for the environment.
Catherine set up Unpackaged because she wanted to refill her groceries using her own containers. The dream was to set up a beautiful shop that made it really easy for customers to come & refill all their daily essentials.
The
website of Unpackaged explains very well why whilst some packaging is necessary in our modern industrialised food chain, unnecessary packaging is a waste because of:
Cost: It increases the price of the goods you buy. You are charged twice – first when you buy over packaged products and then through council tax for disposing of your rubbish.
Waste: It wastes resources at every level: production, storage, transport and disposal.
Pollution: Landfill and incineration are the two main ways of dealing with packaging waste. These are major pollutants for people and the environment as they release toxics and greenhouse gases.
What about recycling? While some packaging is recycled, most ends up in landfill sites and incinerators and some packaging is difficult and impossible to recycle. Recycling is certainly part of the solution, but it will only work if we use less packaging and adopt more ‘reusable’ ways of doing things – Unpackaged is based on this ethos.
This is why the mantra of unpackaged is:Reduce by only buying what you need
Reuse by bringing your containers for a refill
Recycle what you can’t reuse
And… if you can’t reuse or recycle it then don’t buy it!
There is a growing trend
in Europe but also
around the world to minimise packaging. After all, when people go shopping they want to buy food, drinks, etc, they don’t want to buy packaging!
In a sensible world the producers should be interested in getting back the packaging so that they don’t lose the materials and this way they can use them again and again. This is not only how our sensible grandparents used to do it, it is also the basis of a how a deposit refilling system works or how Extended Producer Responsibility is being to be implemented
in British Columbia in Canada.
Implementing Zero Waste strategies it is not only sensible and fun, it also attracts interest from the media. See these press highlights for
Unpackaged:
- Two lovely videos from CNN & Reuters which show off Unpackaged.
- Features in many different types of publications from national newspapers to industry, design & consumer magazines – The Grocer, Which Magazine, The Independent, Style Will Save Us
- Time Out recently voted Unpackaged the #48th best shop in London
- Catherine was voted #32 in the Observer Food Monthly Top 40 Eco Heroes.
- Unpackaged was included in Time Out’s ‘Little Black Book’ of the 500 most essential services in London
Primary school students of Capannori, Italy, set up the Museum of Bad Industrial Design (Piccolo Museo degli orroridi progettazione). A museum of packaging and products that cannot be reused, repaired, recycled or composted and hence have to end up in the dump.
