Day 115: Unwrapped

Image via Unwrapped

I went to Unwrapped on my way home from Fran's this morning. What's Unwrapped? I hear you ask with a breathless sigh. Simmer down. I'm literally about to tell you.

Unwrapped is the new zero waste grocery store on Crookes high street, just round the corner from my house. It's fabulous.

I've walked past a few times, never gone in, I guess because it always looks empty and kind of imposing, and because I didn't know the Procedure, and new places make me anxious when I don't know the Procedure. Maybe I'd walk in and there'd be a secret handshake required and I wouldn't know the handshake and I'd be dropped down a hidden chute and into a monster's cage to be devoured alive. Maybe I'd enter into a room full of hipster artist supermodels and all my clothes would fall off and the artist supermodels would stand around me in a circle pointing and laughing. Maybe the till would be cash only and I wouldn't have any cash and I'd have to face that utter social defeat.

So I never previously went in. I just felt sad and went to Sainsbury's instead, did my sad food shop, tramped sadly home.

But not today. I threw caution to the wind and pushed open the door of Unwrapped, and let me tell you, what I found inside was a positive Shangri-la of tranquillity and delight and Ecover-branded cleaning goods.

Let me explain how it works, in case you too were thinking of popping in but were scared by the unknown Procedures:

The shop sells lots of staples like pasta, pulses, cereals, nuts, tea, coffee, herbs, spices, as well as soaps, shampoos, shower gels, and washing up liquid. The items are all stored in upright dispense containers, like you get for the pick n mix at cinemas.

You take your own tupperware, or any containers you fancy, or there are recycled paper bags on hand if you need them (I used the bags, as I went in on a whim and hadn't planned ahead). If you bring your own containers then there are scales to weigh them, and pens and paper to jot down their weight so they can be subtracted from the total weight at the till. Then you just fill them up with whatever you fancy. Go wild.

Finally you take your haul to the counter, and the nice person behind the till charges you for what you've bought, and you give them the money (cash or card!), say thanks a lot, and you mosey on out of there and get on with the business of being a complete unmitigated badass. Easy peasy lemon breezy.

So come on. You have hand soap in your bathroom. I know you do. And you've got Fairy Liquid in your kitchen. The plastic bottles in which these are stored are made from the blood of dead Iraqi children, basically, and if you throw them away after one use they'll be burned in a landfill or buried underground to make Wall-E sad in ten thousand years, or they'll find their way into the sea and bob along into the North Atlantic Garbage Patch where they will fuck a little fish's day right up.

That's your fault, that is. Image via inhabitat

So rinse those bottles out, take them to Unwrapped, weigh them, then squeeze in some more soap. It's cheap and it's easy and it's one genuinely nice thing you can do for the world with your miserable entitled consumerist life.

And while you're at it get some pasta, because if you get that from the supermarket it comes in single-use plastic. And cereal, which comes in single-use plastic and cardboard. And kidney beans and chickpeas, which come in tins that leave a substantial footprint through their manufacture and collection and recycling, if you even both to recycle them.

So grab your empty takeaway tubs, that glass Kilner jar from the posh biscuits from Christmas, and go fill them with yummy food from Unwrapped.

I know for a fact that some of you reading this live in Crookes or Broomhill or Walkley or Hillsborough, so you guys have less than no excuse for not popping along. If you live elsewhere in Sheffield it's only a short bus ride (52 or 52a from outside the Cathedral), and you can go every few months to stock up on bits and bobs, and trundle back to Netflix and 24-hour-rolling porn feeling just a tiny bit more smug about yourself. And if you live anywhere else I bet you've got a similar zero waste store nearby. You probably can't spit in London for fear of hitting fifteen or so zero waste stores.

Just go! You better goddamned go. I'm going to be so fucking pissed off if you don't go.

Come on. For me. I'll love you forever.

Go go go go go. Go.

Go.