This Organic Grocery Store in Germany Has No Waste, Packaging or Plastic Bags

August 28, 2015

Imagine shopping in a zero-waste grocery store with no food packaging and no plastic bags.

For eco-conscious consumers, that dream is a reality in Berlin, Germany, where Original Unpackaged (Original Unverpackt) opened last year, according to The Epoch Times. The no-waste grocery store was founded by Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski, who envisioned a new way of sustainable shopping.

At Original Unpackaged, shelves are stocked in bulk using dispensable bins. The store offers nearly 350 products that include organic fruit, vegetables, dry grains and pourable liquids that include shampoo, milk and yogurt. Shoppers are encouraged to bring their own refillable containers, borrow some from the store or use bags made from recycled paper.

Consumers pay by weight of the product minus the weight of their containers. An advantage of this form of shopping is that customers buy exactly the amount they need and don’t overspend on food that they might end up throwing out.

Thanks to Wolf and Glimbovski’s successful crowdfunding campaign for social entrepreneurship, the duo were able to raise enough money to fund their experimental grocery store idea. Their mission is to revolutionize the grocery shopping experience and open a nationwide packaging-free supermarket chain.

Their crowdfunding blog reads:

“When out shopping we find a lot of super colorful items with super colorful packaging. What we tend to forget is that this packaging is only waste at the end of the day.

“16 million tons of packaging end up as waste every year in Germany alone.

“This project is there to send a signal to the food industry that different ways of operating are possible. And we as customers finally are able to buy things the way we really want to. We believe that the current way of shopping is not sustainable.”

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