(Salon) Forget plastic bag bans. Berlin is now home to a supermarket that’s gotten rid of all disposable packaging. Original Unverpackt (“Original Unpackaged”), which opened Saturday, is more of a shop, to be exact, but its 350-some products — including from fruits, vegetables, dry grains and pourable liquids like yogurt, lotion and shampoo — are dispensed into refillable containers. (Some liquids come in bottles with deposits on them, which is already standard in Germany).
The shop, backed by crowdfunding, is a creative experiment in a new kind of shopping, one that takes the ethics of stores like Whole Foods to a new level. It sells mostly organic products, each of which is labeled with its country of origin, and eschews brand names. Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski, the duo behind the project, were driven by the slogan “Let’s be real, try something impossible.”
The environmental benefits of that model are not to be discounted, of course. Up to a third of the world’s food is wasted, and in developed nations, much of that waste occurs when people bring home more than they’re able to eat before it goes bad. If people are only selecting what they need, they’re less likely to throw excess food out later. In the U.S., food packaging is credited with keeping the food supply incredibly safe and extending its shelf life, which helps address the food waste problem, but it’s also a major source of waste in and of itself, constituting about a third of our municipal solid waste. Packaging also comes with safety issues of its own, stemming from the potential for chemicals to leach into food. Original Unverpackt’s strategy, which complies with Germany’s strict sanitation rules, is to require all containers brought into the store to be disinfected on-site.
About the author:
Lindsay Abrams is a staff writer at Salon, reporting on all things sustainable. Follow her on Twitter @readingirl, email labrams@salon.com.
Original article published at Salon.com
Photo Credit: Original Unverpackt
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