Little shop... big idea...

Unpackaged is a shop in East London London with a big mission. This quote from their website summarises their philosophy:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” (Buckminster Fuller)

Catherine Conway in her beautiful shop

Catherine Conway set up Unpackaged in 2006, starting off as a market stall and moving to premises in 2007. 

She had a simple but brilliant idea - so brilliant in fact that this year it's been listed as a Timeout London Best Shop and tours and study groups go there to see it.

So what's the idea?

She wanted a way to reuse containers and refill them when she went shopping for groceries. Before I tell you more about Unpackaged itself, I want to pause and talk about why using less packaging is so important.

But can't we just recycle?

Recycling is great. It's a green industry and it saves stuff from going to our nearly-full landfills or into polluting incinerators. 



this man just loves recycling bottles

But recycling is 'after the fact'. It's like sticking a plaster on something that's broken, rather than fixing it. 

Recycling in India

Recycling uses huge amounts of fuel/energy (both in the actual processes and the transport of much of our UK recyclables abroad, for example to India and China), adding to pollution and climate change.


Not only that, but recycling is often not actually recycling. It's downcycling. 

This means that rather than a product being turned into another similar product (a plastic bottle into a plastic bottle) it is turned into a lower grade material or a secondary product (a plastic bottle into carpet backing) and then so on, down the chain. That's not to mention the huge volume of recyclables that end up contaminated (from food for example)and are discarded as soon as they reach the recycling plant. 

As Annie Leonard says in her book The Story of Stuff, "There's a reason recycling comes third in the eco mantra 'reduce, reuse, recycle'". It's part of the solution but not the whole solution. If you've got a few minutes now, watch Annie's video on youtube here to find out a bit more about how your stuff is made and why you need to care about it.

So this is where being 'unpackaged' comes in. 

Having less packaging in the first place uses less resources from start to finish - less water, fuel and materials to make the packaging, less burden on waste disposal and recycling facilities.

There's also another clever element to buying unpackaged. You can buy the amount you actually want rather than how much is in the packaging. Do you actually want twelve satsumas, or would you rather have 5? We throw away an average of £420/year per household, which costs the country £12 BILLION a year in disposal costs. Surely reducing that, especially in the face of our economic situation, rates pine fresh on the Commonsense Sniff-o-meter. Have a look at this page of the LoveFoodHateWaste site to find out more about why wasting less food matters.

Obviously, some packaging is good. You can't just put meat and fish straight into your bag, and some products need protection in transit to the shop and home. But many products don't - your apples don't actually need to come in a little tray which is then wrapped in clingfilm. 

Unpackaged takes this a step further. You go along with empty containers - anything you like, it could be Kath Kidston tins or old water bottles - and you fill them up at the shop. The foods are frequently replenished so produce is kept fresh and you use scoops so it's all hygienic. No need for packaging! It's also cheaper because you're not paying for the packaging and labelling - costs which, believe it or not, are factored into the price you pay. Do you really want to be paying for that random plastic bag inside your cornflakes box? Or the plastic bag that your potatoes come in when you're going to wash and peel them anyway?!

This isn't a new idea. I remember going to a health food shop in Dorset as a child with my step-grandmother and being surprised as she proceeded to fill a large jar up with oats, sultanas, raisins, dried apple and wheat flakes, making her own, tailored muesli. And going back even further, it used to be standard practice to take a shopping basket or bag out with you when you did your food shop and you'd just pop your purchases straight in there.

The international chain Wholefoods also sells many foods unpackaged, from fruit and veg to bulk by pasta and lentils. Here's what they say:
Reusing means you're not only using stuff again, it means less energy is being used to make more stuff. And that means you are keeping waste out of our landfills, less energy from being processed and less resources from being consumed — all from bringing a reusable lunch bag. Talk about not taking much to make quite an impact.
Now, keep thinking with us. You're using that lunch bag again and again. Know what else you're doing? Saving money. That's right! A penny saved is a penny earned and you just proved it. Reusing is an eco-nomical thing to do too.

 
 Unpackaged are great not only because of how their shop sells but because they also offer consultancy to companies of all sizes on how to go 'unpackaged'. This way, they're not just sticking to their own premises but helping spread the word and the methods. 


And this is really the key. Shops that sell unpackaged are rarely mainstream. We need the big supermarkets and the manufacturers they use to move into the 21st Century and start reducing from the top - it would save us all time, fuel and money.

youcanarguewithstupid

Further reading/sources:
Lovefoodhatewaste - for tons of great info on how to waste less food
WRAP - Waste and Resources Action Programme, works on reducing waste and increasing sustainability

Daily Mail article on sending our recycling to India here 

The Telegraph on the volume of household waste we throw away here

The future of waste...Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR)

I first read about EPR in Annie Leonard's book The Story of Stuff a couple of years ago (summary of the book to come in another post).

What is EPR?

Extended Producer Responsibility makes manufacturers responsible for the entire lifecycle of the products and packaging they produce.

So, in real terms, Remington have to deal with your hairdryer when it's gone bust, Apple have to deal with your dead iPod, Kelloggs have to deal with your cornflakes box and that silly plastic bag thing inside it.

It's an extension of CSR - Corporate Social Responsibility - where large companies are expected to plough some of their profit back in to society. In reality, this is often more of an 'ethics-wash' and a very small slice of profit. EPR enhances it by saying it's not enough to pour some funds into 'good works', but that companies should also take responsibility for the product at the end of its lifecycle (the end-product). 

In some places it's referred to as "polluter pays", "take-back" and "product stewardship".

Why is it such a Genius Idea?

The Commonsense Sniff-o-meter
on youcanarguewithstupid:
rotten haddock - eggy - pine fresh

Once you know what EPR is, it seems blindingly obvious and definitely pine fresh on the Common Sense Sniff-o-meter.
Why on earth are we or our local council spending time and money sorting through our waste for recycling, or searching online for where we can safely dispose of our electrical/white goods? Why is taxpayers' money being forked out to dispose of the toxic chemicals in our fridges?

EPR puts the practical and financial burden of waste on the producer instead of on the local council.

Doing this has a number of benefits:

• it encourages the producer to use packaging or components that are less toxic (white goods, e-waste) and made of materials that are more easily recyclable 

Google images outdoes itself with this
prime example of planned obsolescence

• it encourages producers' to make more sustainable products, and  discourages a culture of planned obsolescence

• it internalises the costs of waste management; companies have an easy ride at the moment because they don't have to worry about this end of the chain

The main disadvantage cited against EPR is that it can drive the price of the product up, because the manufacturer is factoring in the costs of recovering the end-product.

However, the costs of recovery exist whether you put them on the council, the consumer or the producer. EPR creates a more accurate pricing of the whole lifecycle of the product.

This is already happening...

There are actually EU-wide and UK laws on Producer Responsibility (links below), which state that as of 1998 onwards, UK producers are expected to "take reasonable steps to recover and recycle packaging waste".

There are 3 main requirements in the law:

1) Source Reduction: limiting packaging weight/volume to the minimum adequate to maintain the necessary level of safety, hygiene, and acceptance for the product and the consumer;

2) Minimum Presence of Hazardous Substances: manufacturing packaging in a way that minimises the presence of hazardous substances in emissions, ash, or leachate when packaging or packaging waste is incinerated or landfilled; and

3) Recovery, Reuse, and Recycling: the packaging should be designed, produced, and sold in such a way as to permit its reuse or recovery, including recycling, and to minimise its impact on the environment when disposed.

Ways of putting it into practice

Now, manufacturers are savvy and the reality is that on a large scale, they're not going to deal with your empty juice cartons or Babybel wrappers. So they do what they do so well - they outsource.

In the UK one of the main providers of "producer responsibility and recycling solutions" is Valpak. To take the burden off producers' hands, Valpak issues them with something like a certificate (Packaging Waste Recovery Note or PRN) proving that they have bought Valpak's services to recycle/recover their waste for them.

In Europe, they're big on the Green Dot.

Pro-Europe's Green Dot trademark

An umbrella organisation called Pro-Europe gives this trademark out to producers and it acts like a signal for consumers telling them that the producer is taking some responsibility for the recovery of the end-product.

Further abroad, the USA is lagging behind with no mandatory EPR rules in place, although the Product Steward Institute over there is trying to drive the idea forwards. Taiwan and Japan have take-back schemes on home appliances that have been in place since 1999 and 2001 respectively.

So EPR is out there and gathering steam, but there is still plenty to be done. EPR needs to be more comprehensive - that is, to involve more end-products (not just packaging, but also e-waste, batteries, clothing etc), and it needs to be a more conjoined effort. Out-sourcing to companies like Valpak combined with local authority schemes can make the whole thing look a bit disjointed. Having a UK-wide comprehensive EPR strategy across all end-products that is effectively monitored and enforced would be an enormous leap forward for sustainability and waste management.

youcanarguewithstupid

Further reading/sources:
Greenpeace report on EPR: "Throughout this report empirical evidence has been provided that clearly illustrates that the environmental performance of products subject to EPR law has improved, particularly regarding hazardous materials reduction and improved recyclability and recycling." here

Useful article on how long different materials take to decompose here

Telegraph article on methods of dealing with our waste after the traditional landfills are filled up here

Bernard London's famous 1932 pamphlet on 'planned obsolescence' here

The UK govt Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging  Waste) Regulations 1997 here

1994 EU directive on packaging and packaging waste here

and a useful summary of it here