Hyderabad: Buy Only As Much As You Need in Zero Waste Store

Starting a zero waste store

Talk with suppliers

Products that you buy from vendors or suppliers come with some sort of packaging that you either throw away or pass along to consumers. However, to have a zero-waste store one should be willing to cut down on that waste and bring in non-plastic packaging products.

- Eliminate unnecessary wrappings

All the plastic bottles, containers and other plastic items can be replaced with steel, cloth or glass which may do the same job, but which produces no waste

- Sort all waste

Materials that come into your shop and has to be disposed of in some way, it's always best to recycle or reuse them.

- Recycle everything

If you want your shop to produce less packaging waste, then you should try to reuse everything possible that is delivered to you. For instance, wood pallets or plastic carts used to hold materials can be given back to your vendors and reused repeatedly.

Hyderabad: The Zero Waste Eco-Stores, a new concept has been garnering attention across India in cities like Goa, Chennai and Bengaluru, has been drawing a steady trickle of customers in Hyderabad too.

The concept claims to produce zero waste as the goods, which are stored are in clear self-service bins or dispensers, are poured into containers either brought by customers from home or can buy at these stores.

You can buy all sorts of staples by weight, from raisins to flour to olive oil to shampoo, taking only as much as you need. There's not a shred of plastic wrap in sight.

The concept which began in Europe more than a decade ago and has since spread is seeing many takers in Hyderabad too.

Explaining about the concept, Pankaj Sancheti, owner of city's first such store, namely 'Zero Waste Eco-Store' in Karkhana, Secunderabad, shares," We follow a stringent no-plastic policy in our store and also believe that any container can be used for storing groceries for your household and have many products as an alternative to plastic items."

"We are trying to encourage customers to get their own non-plastic packaging materials so that essentials like rice, pulses, oils, etc, can be packed in paper covers, cloth bags and containers," he adds.

The stores have stocks of a few cloth bags, bottles and paper covers for a price in case you are not carrying any. The zero waste stores follow the idea of finding alternative to regular plastics which are used to store goods.