In Asia, almost every goddamn grocery item purchased at the supermarket or grocery store comes in a plastic bag.
Even the smallest pack of sweets or a bottle of water is handed over to customers in a tiny little plastic bag. Observe the transactions and very few customers refuse the plastic bag or return it to the checkout lady. At best, the plastic bag will be re-used to pick up dog shit or at worst, be immediately thrown into a general waste trash can outside the supermarket.
And let’s not even talk about Japan, where a packet of candy with pictures of a masturbating koala bear is packed in plastic, which is then packed into a tray of 12 which is then wrapped in plastic and then packed into a cardboard box which is finally displayed on a shelf in the supermarket.
Every year, green movements and government agencies around Asian cities like Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Singapore, to name a few trying to enact some change in consumers’ attitudes towards environmental awareness, spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad campaigns to reduce our reliance on plastic bags and recycling.
Mostly, these campaigns fall on deaf ears. Old habits die hard, yo. But what if the real change started at supermarkets?
A newly proposed concept supermarket in Germany might answer that question, inviting consumers into their zero-waste utopia by encouraging them to tote reusable containers to the store, reported social action digital news site platform, Take Part.
Nothing that comes in a disposable box, bag, jar, or other container is sold at Original Unverpackt. The store eliminates boxed items and instead, uses bulk bins, produce sans shrink wrap or tetra packs and beverage stations for refillable water bottles.
The store is the brainchild of Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski, two Germany-based social impact innovators. On the project’s website, they want to give consumers a choice about how much food they want to buy and how much they want to manage their waste.
According to Take Part, German shoppers have shown interest in Original Unverpackt’s concept store. Although much of the effort is financed by private investors, the project’s team took to crowdfunding to raise the final $61,000 it needed to launch in Berlin. With three weeks to go, the team has smashed that goal, raising about $124,000.
Perhaps supermarkets across Asia should be thinking of concepts like this, because if people aren’t listening to what’s right for the environment, then perhaps they’ll need to be spoon-fed from the point of sale.
As the Original Unverpackt team notes, this generation has “littered the world”, so maybe the next one has a chance to make it better.
