London takes a step back in time with a forward-thinking project: Bulk market is a waste-free shop where packaging does not exist — only reusable containers.
Bulk market is London's first zero-waste shop, where you can stock up on food products — and more — using containers brought from home or purchased on site. Here plastic is banned, with the exception of recycled plastic, and the motto displayed on the wall is "zero-waste": no waste and no excess.
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It is Monday morning in the Dalston neighbourhood, east London. A girl walks into Bulk market and, after looking around, pulls a glass container from her rucksack and fills it with fusilli — but not before asking the owner, Ingrid Caldironi, whether she can help herself. The shop has been open for less than a month, yet footfall is already high and the community has responded positively. It may be down to its formula — simple and reminiscent of the past, when plastic and packaging did not exist — or to the philosophy behind it and its aim of protecting the environment.
In this shop you can buy food and non-food goods, strictly unbranded, paying only for the product and not the packaging. You simply bring your own containers from home, weigh them on the scales to calculate the tare, note down the figure, then weigh them again at the end to get the net weight and the price to pay at the till. If you have not brought a container with you, you can always buy one of the recycled ones on sale. "Bulk" in English refers to the large sack used to store large quantities of provisions, and that is how Caldironi purchases and stores many of her products, from pasta to pulses to oat flakes for a classic English porridge. The shelves also carry cheeses, herbs and spices, seasonal vegetables, and even a section dedicated to ingredients for DIY beauty products such as essential oils and natural soaps, not to mention oil and balsamic vinegar from Modena — Ingrid was born in Brazil, but her grandparents have roots in Emilia.
"The inspiration for this project comes from my personal and professional experience," Caldironi explains. "I worked for years in the retail world and was able to see first-hand the waste that exists in that sector too. What's more, to do my shopping somewhere completely different from a supermarket — without wasting containers and packaging — I had to travel right across London, so I decided to launch my own social project and help the community as well."
"Living sustainably shouldn't be this difficult, but it is, because of the lobbies backed by the government, which claim that eliminating packaging means eliminating jobs. Mine is also a social endeavour, because if you manage to build an awareness of these issues you can make your voice heard," continues the founder of Bulk market.
All the products on sale in the shop come from local businesses in the surrounding neighbourhoods, and Caldironi herself visits her trusted baker along the same street every day. "I don't keep large quantities of stock, as supermarkets do, because they would very likely go to waste and that would undermine one of this project's objectives. I'd rather tell my customers that today, for instance, the salad has run out — but the products I sell are always fresh, and they are exactly what I would eat myself and keep in my own kitchen."
Until the end of October, Bulk market will operate as a pop-up shop, but the goal — supported by a crowdfunding campaign — is to open a permanent, larger store in the Hackney neighbourhood, stocking more than 300 products and also featuring a composting machine and a space for DIY workshops.
For the project, Caldironi has enlisted innovative designers and architects who will use reclaimed materials to fit out the new shop. Designers Jan Jongert, one of the founders of the studio Superuse in the Netherlands, and Andreas Lang, co-founder of Public works, are working on the project, which involves salvaging unusual materials such as parts of the sets used in theatres — including the celebrated Royal Opera House in London — and metal offcuts. These two designers do not usually work for private clients, but rather on public, community-focused projects; however, given the strong social dimension of this initiative, they made an exception. The motto to adopt — and Bulk market's hashtag — is self-explanatory: #zerowastemadesimple.