Our any tiny move in daily living, honestly speaking, has been a potential source to produce trash and waste. The process of purchasing food and grocery, as a cycle closest to life triviality though, is one of processes that we could be able to control the amount of trash. According to statistics of European Union (EU), each citizen of EU would produce 475 domestic garbage and 157 one-time-used packaged garbage annually. Such astounding number does nothing but ferociously forces EU to call on implementing garbage recycle for sure.
As for mass civil possessing same spirit in response to reduction of trash for earth, a number of enthusiasts have helped initiated a new consumption mode, establishment of zero packaging stores, via fundraising and joint-venture. The zero packaging stores claim to develop the spirit on forefront of daily living: consumers do not purchase packaged goods and excessive packaging, but use recycled container they brought from home to replace the shopping bags. Some of the zero packaging stores even combine various issues, such as zero waste, healthy ingredients, reduced carbon output and increasing community employment, into their business operation for better and clearer market niche.
The earliest concretized zero packaging stores could be traced back to 2007 in London, when a store named Unpackaged in Illingston was officially open to the public. Unpackaged features organic, indigenous ingredients and recycled waste as business philosophy, which is similarly like to Whole Foods Market [annotation 1] in USA. In following 2012 and 2014, zero waste stores, In.gredients and Original Unpacked, were also established respectively in Austin, USA, and Berlin, Germany, continuing to promote this very new idea of less packaged and recycling. In Taiwan, on the other hand, the concept of zero packaging store was not realized until two youngsters, Kate and Bally, with extreme passion for cooking finally set up the first zero packaging store, Naked Market, in Minsheng Community of Taiwan in hope of popularizing the brick-and-mortars in society step by step.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that Naked market is propagated as a preeminent pioneer in domestic zero waste grocery shopping at the time, it still cannot withstand the lack of funding and popularity. After two years of struggling, Naked Market chose to temporarily discontinue the business on May 1. For a business act realizing the innovation in form and notion, the setback Naked Market faced is quite common and lethal; however, although the operational outcome did no turn out lucrative, the concept was not eclipsed. Now more and more zero waste stores alike are booming around Europe and America, and each one has developed indigenously with ad hoc management to discover the market niche for profit: a business model with zero waste notion and local feature therefore came to light.
In light of this trend, BEACONst has launched the first ever feature news, Zero Waste Fad, to collect several classic business stories amongst USA, Germany and Taiwan, meanwhile, introducing a TEDxTeen talk regarding how a life of zero waste refines personal livelihood. Thus, via focused collation, BEACONst is able to present the essence of zero waste to all readers.
[annotation 1] A famous USA food chain store, whose headquarter locates in Austin, Texas. Whole Foods Market also established branches in Europe and Canada, specializing in offering customers organic foods in transparent and safe way with mechanisms such as rating systems, genetic modified organism (GMO) labeling transparency, fair trading and etc.
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筆墾家 BEACONst 