Week Without Waste
The peppers, the spaghetti, your lemonade or the bag of chips – although unnecessary packaging is disappearing like snow in the sun at many supermarkets, much of our food still remains packaged. In addition, the knowledge of waste separation is still not good in many parts of the country. For example, the headline in the North Holland newspaper last week was 'I thought paper should be added to plastic, learned something new'. The packaging that is currently available in the store regularly does not end up in the right place.
Although it is important that everyone is well informed about where to go with your waste, the real change in the waste mountain actually starts one step earlier: With the purchase. A Dutch person opens an average of 7 new packages per day. These are all purchased new somewhere. This mountain of waste is a problem that we have all created and we can only solve it together: not only supermarkets and branded products that have to reduce the number of packaging and make it more environmentally friendly, but also the consumer.
To further stimulate consumers, the Week Without Waste called in life. An initiative of Milieu Centraal, which wants to take on the challenge together to throw away as little waste as possible from May 31 to June 6. For example, the less packaging you buy, the less waste you produce.
You're probably thinking: going shopping for a week without buying waste is almost impossible, isn't it? Nothing is less true. Because although it sometimes seems necessary that your purchases in the supermarket are wrapped in foil, plastic or paper, this is not always the case. Living proof of this is the new online supermarket: Pieter Pot. A supermarket that shows that you can do your shopping without buying packaging. By purchasing everything in bulk and selling in glass jars, they save on one-time packaging. When you next purchase, you return the empty jars, which are then used again. Your spaghetti, lemonade and chips now without that packaging.
The fact that there is a demand for these types of initiatives is evident from the long waiting list for the new supermarket. Two weeks after registering at Pieter Pot in Amsterdam, your waiting list number is 13249. To participate in the Week Without Waste, this tip is just a little too late and until then you have to pay attention to what you buy in the supermarket. and whether this can be done in a more packaging-free manner. You can read more about how you can contribute during the waste-free week on the website Environment Central.
