Cutting plastic and living compostably
Can be bought from the Weigh & Save in Penzance and possibly at the other branches of this strange store
What do you call this - cooking salt?
Budget and in a box from Lidles
Find refill stores in
Oxford
Penzance
Plymouth
Peterborough
What Are Refill Stores?
Bulk buy or refill stores are places you can buy food loose.You take as much as you want/need from a larger container and you can usually use your own packaging.
Packaging
While these shops provide bags and they are almost always plastic ones. You will need to take your own plastic-free and/or reusable bags.
The weight of the container may make a difference at checkout. Some shops subtract the tare weight but other don’t. The tare weight is the weight of the empty container.
OXFORD
Welcome to SESI
We are Oxford’s longest serving refill station of food products and household detergents.
SESI has its own range of laundry and household detergents which create no packaging waste from factory to consumer. They are also effective cleaners, environmental and cheap. We also offer refills of some well known products from Bio-D, Ecover and Faith in Nature.
The SESI food depot offers a growing range of fairtrade, organic and local foods.
We exist to help you minimise packaging waste and access the best products at a reasonable price. We reduce packaging by encouraging customers to bring their bags, bottles and tubs for refill at our depot or at our farmers market stall.
All 250 refills and food/household products we hold as depot stock are available to order through this website. You can download a catalogue of 5000 more! For tips on how to get the best out of this website go to ‘More About Ordering’.Please note we don’t take payment when you place an order - pay us on delivery or collection. We accept cash, cheque or you can now pay by card.
Plymouth
Ethica: http://www.facebook.com/EthicaVeganStore/
155 Armada Way, Plymouth, PL1 1HY
Refills for detergent, shampoo, washing up liquid etc; soap bars, non-plastic toiletries, cleaning items
Blog post includes trip to Ethica https://ourrubbishblog.wordpress.com/2018/04/07/a-clean-break/
Peterborough
Backyard Food in Peterborough is an ethical shop looking to enhance the availability of local, organic, fairtrade, vegan, plastic-free products. It stocks food, household products and toiletries as refills. Recently re-launched, they plan to expand their current range of refills – https://www.facebook.com/backyardfoodpeterborough
span style=”color: #ff0000;”>Penzance
15B Causewayhead
Penzance
Cornwall TR18 2SN
One of the incredibly eccentric loose food outlets that can occasionally be found huddled under the idiosyncratic Weigh and Save umbrella. You can read more about them here…
This is a good one selling all manner of loose food stuffs. I stocked up on
Blog post about our visit to ‘Save A Packet’ and ‘Weigh Inn’ (Penzance) https://ourrubbishblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/03/the-incredible-bulk-stores/
Loose Food A to Z
Find out if a shop near you sells bulk food loose. This is stuff that that normally comes plastic packaged i.e rice, pasta and salt. And yes these shops do exist in the U.K. There’s just not many of them.
Heres a list of towns with shops selling loose food.
Find A Milk Delivery Service With Glass Bottles Here
Supermarkets
Sometimes supermarkets can surprise you - check out the plastic-free and reduced packaging products here.
Please add any shops you know of in the comments below and I will incorporate them into the post.
Links to reviews particularly welcome.
Dont have a blog? Love guest posts…
lines changes, products get removed. For more information why not ask the Plastic Is Rubbish FB group for updates. They are a great source of tidbits, personal experience and the latest news. Why not join them and share the plastic free love x
If you have found the #plasticfree information useful, please consider supporting us. It all goes to financing the project (read more here) or
Rushing through the Cheltenham suburbs, had to buy wine so lurched into the huge carpark of an out of town shopping experience. By which I mean a cluster of huge supermarkets snarling at each other across an enormous expanse of tarmac dotted with a huddle of tiny trees at least one of which was sporting a plastic bag. Village Boy leapt out of the van and bounded off shouting, white hare like, about time. I was following rather more sedately when Whole Foods Market caught my eye. I had never seen one before and I admit I snorted at the messages plastered on the windows…. but I went to have a look anyway.
I have numerous issues with supermarkets which I won’t go into here. Suffice to say I use them when I have to but they deeply irritate, even anger me. The packaging, the waste, the plastic are just a few of the niggles.
And yet, I was about to have a supermarket epiphany. Yes Whole Foods Market are my idea of supermarket heaven. If there have to be supermarkets, then let them be like this.
They have
All of the above you can buy by weight in your own containers. This is common in the U.S. and Australia. They have bulk stores or bulk foods aisle in a grocery store. In this case it doesn’t necessarily mean buying huge amounts but buying loose and unpackaged.
BYO Bags
While the carrier bags at the check-out are paper, the rest of the packaging, the produce bags and bottles they provide, are all plastic so you would have to take your own compostable pots and reusable bags. Easily done - find out how here.
Tare
The weight of the bag will make a difference at checkout in the price per weight. The tare weight is the weight of the empty container. Whole Food Markets have weighing machines that allow you to do this yourself. It is very easy.
Lush
Whole Foods Market as it name suggests also has a organic eco criteria. This isn’t some giant Weigh & Save shop but a plush, lush shopping experience
Since then I have taken the opportunity to visits as many Whole Food Markets as I can.
Find A Store
They have stores in London, Cheltenham and Glasgow
I have taken photo journals which I have posted up on Facebook. Follow the links for
Please check that stock is available before you visit - the photos are quite old now and NOT ALL STORES ARE THE SAME. For instance Glasgow does Ecover refills Cheltenham doesn’t.
This American company have recently opened some flagship stores in the UK It is funky, good looking and challenging. It boasts impressive eco credentials. I wanted to know more so I emailed ahead asking if it would be OK for me to take photos next time I visited. Not only did they say yes, but Renata Rees, Marketing Team Leader, offered to meet me. An offer I eagerly accepted. You can read about it here
Find more loose food shops here
Here in lovely Huddersfield, we buy much of our stuff from Khadims, the Asian Supermarket on Blacker Road, including;
Loose unwrapped foods
You have to take your own cotton produce bags, scoop up as much as you need and they weigh it at the counter at the counter. Smashing.
Strolling round the delightful Gotham City like splendour that is Leeds Market I came across the NUT SHOP the most fantastic stall where all manner of cake related stuff from hundreds and thousands to candied peel and silvered almonds are all sold LOOOSE.
AND cocoa!!!!
You can see a photo record of some of their loose products here
If you want to buy loose, you will need to take your own reusable packaging – produce bags, tupperware even compostable disposables. You can find them here.
You can find stalls selling loose
Read more about it here….
As the plastic movement grows more shops are selling naked food; stuff that that normally comes plastic packaged ie rice, Some sell pasta. Heres a list of towns with shops selling loose food.
But loose food shops are still few and far between, Don’t despair. It is possible to buy food online loose and plasticfree. You can even use your own cotton produce bags for some things. READ MORE HERE.
If you want to buy loose, you will need to take your own reusable packaging – produce bags, tupperware even compostable disposables. You can find them here.
Supermarkets & Chainstores
Because sometimes we have to shop there and yes you can get plastic free and zero waste stuff. Read our supermarket reviews here.
Better Plastic
Many products like dried fruit come packaged in lovely looking, printed, laminated plastic film. Or to put it more simply several layers of plastic each with different properties stuck together. Because they consist of different plastics bonded together it is difficult to know what they are and how to treat them and separating the films is tricky and so very expensive. Films therefore often don’t get recycled but burnt or landfilled.
Simple polythene bags are easy to recycle. You can read more about that here.
Check the recycling info on the package to find out more.
Feel guilty buying plastic packed food? So do we but sometimes you have to so we apply the special treats rule. read more about the three levels of plastic free food
See all our food posts via the food index
lines changes, products get removed. For more information why not ask the Plastic Is Rubbish FB group for updates. They are a great source of tidbits, personal experience and the latest news. Why not join them and share the plastic free love x
If you have found the #plasticfree information useful, please consider supporting us. It all goes to financing the project.