Giving Up Plastic: Unpackaged

Taking a walk around the average supermarket when you've given up plastic is an exercise in not being able to buy anything. For everything it would appear can only be sold if it comes contained by or encased in plastic. From apples to cheese, bread to yoghurt, meat to fish, drinks to icecream and beyond, all come with a side helping of plastic.

I've had to give up my beloved caramelized onion hummous but it's yoghurt I've found hardest. (When I gave up plastic last Lent I did track down some buffalo milk yoghurt at the Stoke Newington Farmers Market and then attempted to make my own using it as a starter but it wasn't very successful)

So enter the great lifesaver that is Unpackaged.

Unpackaged was started by Catherine Conway in 2006 in the belief there had to be a better way to sell food than wrapped up in plastic, a woman clearly after my own heart. It started life as a market stall (and if I remember correctly you could also buy from certain offices) and now has a very cute shop on Amwell Street in Islington, London.

Basically you take along your own containers to fill up with basic provisions such as oats and flour and dried fruit (well that's an essential in my house) and pulses and cereals and all sort of other yummies. (If you don't have your own you can use a lightweight bags, but they'd much rather you brought your own and currently offer a substantial discount for doing so). They also do a heap of other stuff apart from dried goods but more on that anon.

Buying loose is not exactly a new thing, I remember when I used to visit my brother in Newcastle there was a fabulous shop in the covered market there where you could go and get flour and so forth by the scoopful, but Unpackaged is also concerned about the product as well as the packaging with most goods being either organic or Fairtrade. Yay.

And, oh glory be, you can also buy yoghurt there. It comes in a huge tub which gets refilled each week and you ladle as much as you want into your own pot.