Auf Wiedersehen to plastic at Berlin’s no-packaging store

Clutching their preserve jars, Tupperware boxes and cloth shopping bags, Berliners can now buy their groceries package-free in a “pre-cycling” first for the environmentally switched-on city. The layers of packaging that consumers usually have to get through—and dispose of—are a thing of the past at “Original Unverpackt” (Originally Unpackaged) store. Shoppers can buy muesli, rice or pasta by directly helping themselves from the large store containers to fill their own receptacles before getting it weighed at the cash till. The store is encouraging “pre-cycling”, a preventive form of environmentalism, as opposed to just recycling already used packaging.

It was important to act and to be part of the solution instead of just getting worked up about the predicted end of the world.

Milena Glimbovski, co-founder of Original Unverpackt

Customers seemed taken with the Berlin store. “Our society worries far too little about the problem of plastics,” complained Kathrin Puzia, a shopper in her 40s, who said she planned to get her groceries at the new shop “from time to time”. Another customer, Lisa Specht, said she’s been buying organic aubergines out of concern for the environment but questioned the benefit when they were still packaged. “Each one was wrapped in plastic film. Where’s the ecological gain?” she asked.

Europe plastic store