A game changer in shopping that is planet friendly is the introduction of refill shops. Refill shops offer the opportunity to enjoy all your usual larder staples including pastas, pulses, dried fruits, nuts and much more but with no unnecessary packaging. You simply take your own containers and fill – buying only how much you need. Many refill stores offer a wealth of products, far beyond just the cooking basics. Now you can refill all your cleaning products, have lots of toiletry options, treat yourself with chocolates, dried fruit, frozen fruit, stock up on cereals, herbs, and even ready made baking mixes.
My favourite example is the charming Harmless. Originally set up in a tiny shed in Wood Green, North London, but then as it grew moving to a larger store down the road in Hornsey. The new store is ample to fill to the rafters with a wealth of vegan, plastic free products. The staff are friendly, welcoming and extremely helpful. Their range flexes and grows according to stock availability, but there is a constant plethora of larder essentials, treats, home cleaning substances, cooking aids and much much more.
It is extraordinary but also obvious that so many products, foods, liquids and substances can be sold without packaging. Our desire for pristine shopping, scaremongering for contamination, and history of believing everything is better if it comes sealed and wrapped has pushed us to believe that this is the only way – but less or no packaging is merely how things used to be done decades ago. Now, again, we can safely shop with no packaging and it is really empowering to reduce or remove the waste and excess wrapping. It is also a true step forward to reduce food waste and only buy how much you need, to avoid the dreaded unnecessary deadlines set with ‘best before’ dates (which already this year a well known supermarket is looking to remove from many items so we learn to use our judgement and reduce waste). Very importantly it also be a far more cost conscious and support lower income shopping to buy in smaller amounts, more regularly. Refill stores offer organic level products that can even rival their non-organic counterparts in the supermarkets which debunk the myths that this way of shopping is expensive and for the wealthier percentage of the community.
Research where you may have your closest refill store, but also investigate local food markets as these can often have stalls dedicated to packaging-free shopping. Recently I have even seen refill vans popping up as a local service – a like to the old fish monger road to road delivery service, and looking alike to a milk float, these vans will rock up in your streets on certain planned days and you just have to pop out the house and stock up!
Another way to reduce waste with less packaging is to think about what food you buy and how – ideas include using the in store bakeries or high street bakeries for bread shopping instead of plastic wrapped loaves; bulk by liquids and decant once home; purchase fruit and veg from local green grocers and do not use the bags – again using local markets is a great aid for this; reuse the packaging of one item to store another; opt for products in glass containers that can be reused time after time for storing other things (or at a refill store!)
Every time you see that little black ‘not currently recycled’ logo either give that product a wide birth or think whether that packet could be reused. Make a stand against single use plastic – its unnecessary and adding to our landfill day after day. When biodegradable plastic exists there is no need for other plastic.
THE LOCAL VEGAN 