I love finding stores that make it easy to shop zero waste. Stores like Unpackaged (England) or In.gredients (Texas) or La Forêt (Wakefield).
My most recent “find” was this past weekend in Powell River, BC. When we pulled into town, we noticed Ecossentials first thing what with its “get unpackaged” and “refillable cleaners” window signage, but it was Sunday, so we satisfied ourselves with pressing our noses up against the glass.
The next day, we headed there before leaving town. Ecossentials sells bulk food and cleaning supplies as well as food tins, glass straws, ethical toys, lunch kits, and even an electricity-free espresso maker.. . all with nary a plastic bag to be seen. It’s our kind of place.
In the dry goods section, they have neat stacks of cotton bags you can buy if you forget your own. In the back, they have shampoo, liquid soap, and laundry soap on tap. They even do door to door delivery with reused containers.
Even better, Melissa, the owner, had seen our film the night before and offered to sell our movie in her store. How awesome is that!?
I could go on and on, but Grant got a new iphone plugin that he was itching to use, so maybe I’ll just let you see it for yourself:
PS – she mentions Pebble in the Pond in the video – they have great information of plastic reduction here
The Clean Bin Project Blog 
This looks fantastic. I must say, I’m jealous that you have such a neat store near you! Your video was fun too, made more so by the fact that I watched it with the sound turned off. It was even more old-timey that way.
Oh man! Everytime I read about a new store like this opening up I get super jealous. Living in Germany it is rare to find any kind of bulk anything. We try to do our best with bringing our egg cartons to the market again and always bring our own shopping bags, but I really miss bulk food and being able to fill containers I already have with goodness….
what an awesome store! now if only such places were more widespread!
I hope that stores like that become much more popular. 🙂
coolness
There’s a new store that sell bulk soap products on Main St. It’s called The Soap Dispensary http://thesoapdispensary.com/. Looks like they have great products.
ooooh, good one. I’ll have to check it out!
This is great – thanks for profiling the store in Wakefield. Always such good info here!!
I’m in Ottawa and had no idea – shared this on Heartfelt and gave you a shout out! Thanks!
The key issue, particularly here in the UK is the number of supermarkets that have quite literally taken over the high street. Their logistics are set up for centralised delivery based upon a “just in time model”. As a result, everything is pre-packed for ease of delivery and unloading onto store shelves. This leaves little room for package free goods. However, on the flips side, I’ve been shopping more and more in local farm shops, which provide fresh, unpacked produce, so there’s far less waste when we’ve unpacked our food at home.