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