Genius German Supermarket

Original and Unpackaged are opening their first supermarket in Berlin, the exciting part? It is entirely packaging-free. Most products will be sold in bulk, with customers being encouraged to bring their own containers or recyclable paper bags. You can see founders Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski talk more about it here: This sounds like an excellent idea, and actually kind of a throw back to earlier days. Packaging’s only quality that is necessary is protecting the food it carries, so why not do away with plastic waste by just using reusable containers. I don’t care about the looks I’m going to get, I’m definitely going to start doing this at bulk stores – I mean, half the time I’m going to funnel that giant bag of spelt flour into a glass jar anyway, so why not skip the middle man? The statistic that they quote in the video is pretty staggering: we each produce 250kg of waste a year. I mean, that's really not the kind of weight I was hoping to shed. Even with my reusable bags and my eco-friendly attempts, it's not a surprising number when you would find this: at a grocery store, as opposed to this: