If stores have spent the last few years pushing reusable bags, then in 2010 we should move on to the issue of food-packaging waste. I expect to see more products like the Rethink Coat Hanger, which transforms two plastic water bottles into a clothes hanger.
A recent Good post (via Twitter user KCKimchi) profiles Unpackaged -- a two-year-old grocery store in London that only sells unpackaged goods. Customers bring their own bags and containers to the store, which is stocked with produce, nuts, cooking ingredients like flour and rice, and even toiletries.
There are signs that Kansas City could be ready for an Unpackaged-type concept. Restaurants like Cafe Europa are using Earthscraps LLC to turn food waste into compost. Only once I have seen someone use the fresh water dispensers in parking lots, but the things have been around a long time so people must use them. In other parking lots around town, Ripple Glass recycling containers certainly seem to be getting more use. And the number of farmer's markets in the Kansas City area keeps growing, and that's how Unpackaged started.
In our consumer culture, it's as if packaging matters almost as much as the food. But we're also heavy on the concept of storage -- you likely own more Tupperware than you expect -- and with the growing popularity of reusable bags, maybe a farmer's market version of a grocery store is possible.
The next time you're at the City Market, stop into the Habashi House grocery. With its large, open center display of nuts, dried fruits and spices, you'll find some nice inspiration for cooking and the kind of smells that make you hungry. You'll also discover what it's like to shop from a store where everything is out in the open. Habashi House is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day.
[Image via Flickr: heydrienne]
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If any of y'all are in San Francisco and are into the unpackaged thing, it'd also be worthwhile to check out Green11.
They've got a shop down in Noe Valley (neighborhood in SF) that allows local residents & businesses to drop by with their empty cleaning products containers and get them re-filled with biodegradable, non-toxic cleaning products.
Pretty cool. Obviously not an entire grocery store of unpackaged, but still helps cut down on a few of those billions of bottles that are floating around out there.
I know the owner through the eco purchasing co-operative I run, so happy to put folks in touch if you like.
Fresh Water Dispenser - A place where people blow money on water that likely contains nothing more/less than the free water from their faucet.
Sincerely though, it's essentially a drive up water dispenser that you bring a large receptacle or multiple small bottles to fill for a price per quantity and it assures you that it's clean and filtered and smurfy blue, etc. Whole Foods has one in the drink aisle towards the back of the store.
Package free is a novel idea. Americans are way too germaphobic to support this in anything other than a niche format. Interestingly, if you are a budget shopper and don't buy frozen or premade junk, you might already be closer to this model than you think. Consider that veggies can put in a reusable paper bag or no bag at all. One can use reusable bags for flour, sugar, and other items that can be bought in the bulk aisle at Whole Foods. Fresh Meat has to be wrapped in paper or something or you could bring a tupperware for that I suppose. I just realized that you would have to be a Whole Foods shopper for this case to work, since they are the only store I know of that does dried goods in the bulk bin format on a broad scale. Hyvee is offering fresh ground flour now. Basically this is the speech I give people that tell me Whole Foods is too expensive. Not really, if you buy raw items that haven't been manufactured in to some sort of finished item.
I never buy stuff from Habashi:all the storage directions for spices say keep in a dark,dry area,sealed in a container,not in an open container in an open air store.
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