One of the leading contributors of garbage is food packaging. The United States still produces roughly three pounds of trash per person every day, and nearly 80% of food is wrapped in some sort of packaging.
Germany though, could be leading a change in the way grocery stores package their food with the first waste-free supermarket. According to the Mind Unleashed, it’s called Original Unvertpackt and has the goal of cutting out food packaging before it hits the store shelves. The store is using bulk bins and cutting out produce that is wrapped in plastic, and you also won’t find any boxes, bags or jars.
The supermarket’s founders, Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski say that they want people to have the choice of how much food they buy, instead of grabbing something that’s already packaged. It’s a noble concept, but could something like this catch on and become the norm?
People are slowly starting to come around to the idea of bringing their own reusable grocery bags to the store, but asking them to bring their own containers too might be a stretch. Still, if American grocery stores can honestly look at what Original Unvertpackt is doing and try to adopt some of their principals, our planet would be a little better off.