Shop review - Unpackaged

Now that introductions are over, I thought I’d start in earnest with a review of Unpackaged, a London shop that has made a name for itself selling everyday food and household products with little to no packaging. 

I first learnt about this shop after reading a book called ‘Zero Waste home’ by US-based sustainability and zero-waste enthusiast Bea Johnson. The book - and original blog - offers tips on how to live less wastefully, and includes particularly useful suggestions on reducing packaging by taking your own reusable containers when shopping, and refusing packaging when it’s not truly needed. 

After absorbing her wise words, I did a lot of googling to see if I could apply her advice on shopping packaging-free here in London. Then I found Unpackaged: 
 

The neat rows of sealed produce bins, shelves of oils, jars of sugar, tea, seasonings and sweets, and tables of organic produce are an inspiring example of how elegant and modern sustainable shopping can be. Customers bring their own reusable containers, have them weighed (‘tared') at the counter when empty, fill them up, then have them weighed again with the container weight deducted. If you don’t have a container handy, recycled paper bags are available for free, or you can buy glass bottles and tupperware.

Whilst I found that fresh produce was generally out of my everyday price range, and also not altogether that sustainable (dried pineapple from the tropics for instance), basic, locally-sourced dried food items and household things were no more expensive than regular supermarket versions. In fact, they are often cheaper!

Example: Empty fairy liquid bottle, refilled with ecover washing liquid = £0.93p approx.

So that’s where I get my household cleaners and selected store cupboard items. It works out cheaper than buying them in the supermarkets near me, and any occasional extra expenditure is balanced out by the huge reduction in packaging I’m putting into landfill. If anyone lives in north east or east London, I highly recommend a visit.

First post

Welcome to my blog, The Bashful Activist. It is still in the process of being beautified, so bear with me while I make that happen. In the meantime, here’s a description of what this blog is for.

At its simplest level, it is an attempt to share information about and experiences of living as ‘sustainably’ as possible in London, UK, where I am from and live. A recent convert to the idea of sustainability in its various modes, I follow a lot of interesting and inspiring blogs from all round the globe, however many of them document the journeys of those living in rural areas where true self-reliance is possible, or in urban locations that are far more advanced in terms of sustainability. So I thought I would start my own small information hub here, for those in a similar situation.

As the blog’s title suggests however, it will also house general thoughts on ‘activism’, and explore why, despite the worrying or upsetting or irritating information we are bombarded with daily, ‘activism’ – humanitarian, environmental, legal, otherwise – is still seen as the preserve of radicals, students or modern-day saints.  

It’s undeniable that activism in the ‘traditional’ sense often seems incompatible with the lives most people lead. Most people probably don’t have the means to dedicate themselves to full- or even part-time change-making, particularly as it doesn't often follows a schedule you can plan for in advance. It’s also hard to deny that there are ‘traditional’ activists out there who are unwilling or simply unable - despite their strong convictions that they are doing something good - to share this conviction with ‘normal’ people and thereby introduce these convictions into the mainstream. Perhaps it’s down to some sort of snobbism, or maybe it’s just because they are so caught up in what they are doing; either way I believe it can give the impression of a volunteer/activist ‘elite’ shut off to the average citizen.

That said, history shows that normal people can start something monumental. Rosa Parks is an obvious example; her simple act of sitting where she wasn't supposed to sit played a central part in the American civil rights movement. Which convinces me that ‘activism’ is not the sole preserve of the great and the good. The more people view themselves as capable of demanding and enforcing change at a grass-roots level, the more likely we are to succeed in creating a future worth looking forward to.  

As the wife of an acquaintance advised me not long ago, it’s about understanding what you can do, and doing it, instead of feeling demoralised or debilitated by what you can’t do, for whatever reason.