I have come across and visited this fantastic little store in London, called Unpackaged. Unpackaged sells everything loose; therefore without any packaging at all so it is up to the customer to bring their own containers (such as jars, tins etc) to take the products home. Unpackaged sells a wide range of products from washing-up liquid to red kidney beans. If you do forgot your container, then you can buy a one-off reusablable one.
Here is their policy statement, which is fantastic:
Apart from the teas, all of the products we source are certified organic
We always source fair trade products where possible
We do not sell any products that are air freighted
We give preference to suppliers who are cooperatives or social enterprises
We apply the principles of the waste hierarchy: reduce, reuse and recycle
We plan efficiently to minimise any transportation by ourselves and our suppliers
As stated by Michael Pawlyn, The Guardian, November 21 2005: “ It’s hard to visit a landfill site without being struck by the craziness of taking very valuable minerals and resources out of the ground, using a lot of energy, turning them into short life products and then just dumping them back into the ground. It’s an absolutely monumental waste of energy and resources. As someone from the fashion industry might say, its just so last century”
The Problem with Packaging
Cost: Unnecessary packaging increases the price of the goods you buy. It means you are charged twice; first when you buy over packaged goods and then through your council tax to dispose of your rubbish.
Cost: Unnecessary packaging increases the price of the goods you buy. It means you are charged twice; first when you buy over packaged goods and then through your council tax to dispose of your rubbish.
Waste: Unnecessary packaging is a waste of resources at every level: to produce, store and transport, remove and to dispose of.
Pollution: The two main methods of disposing of this packaging – landfill and incineration – are major pollutants for humans and the environment and release greenhouse gases.
What about recycling? While some packaging is recycled, most ends up in landfill sites and some packaging is just difficult and often impossible to recycle. Recycling is certainly part of the solution, but it will only work if we use less packaging in the first place and adopt more reusable ways of doing things- it is this ethos of reuse that Unpackaged is based on.
1 comment:
Love the idea of this shop - it is crazy how much packaging supermarkets (and most shops) still use. This is just how most greengrocers and markets used to sell produce - maybe we'll see a return to that. Hope so!
Post a Comment