Owner of zero-waste shop takes environmentalism to the next level

A Dalhousie University grad's quest to curb her wastehasturned into a business that's upping the ante on environmentalism.

Unpacked Halifax is a zero-waste pop-up shopthat sells food and home products, such as shampoo, soap and detergent, withoutthe packaging found in typicalgrocery stores. Shoppers must bring their own reusable containersor buy cotton bags madeby thePrescott Group, a social enterprisein the North End.

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"It's kind of the next step of environmentalism," said ownerCairaClark, who graduated fromDalhousie's environment,sustainability and society programlast year.

"A lot of us have already switched to bringing our own bags to the store, we might have changed our light bulbs to fluorescent or LED, made those kind of simple switches. This is the next step to diving in."

All wrapped up

Clarkhas been reducing what she throws awayfor years, but only attempted to gozero-wasteabout a year ago. The idea is simple enough don't buy anything you'd haveto throw away. Butit's not alwayseasy to execute.

Pet products like cat food and catlitter, as well as shampoo and detergentsare especially tricky, said Clark.

"You kind of run up against some walls when you're living a zero-waste lifestyle and there is no opportunity for zero-waste shopping," said the 23-year-old.

That's why Unpacked Halifax tries to sell items that aren'tnormally found in bulk. In addition to glass jars of dried foods, Clark has a 20-litre jug of dish detergent and a couple tubs of goat milk shampoo that she ladles into customers' reusable containers.

Growing the green economy

Despite companies like Bulk Barn allowing customers to use reusable containers and more stores getting rid of plastic bags, Canadians are producingmore garbage.

According to Statistics Canada,household waste in2014 grew toover 9.9 million tonnes,an increase of roughly onemillion tonnes from 2004.

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Satya Ramen with the Ecology Action Centreis encouraged by the trend oflimiting the purchase of packaged goods, although she saidit's still relatively new.Other than Unpacked, Ramen said shehasn't heard of othercompletely zero-waste stores in Nova Scotia.

"That's part of what we want to see in a green economy, people thinking differently about how we operate as businesses and what kinds of businesses we want to support and how that can support clean, green jobs for our future," she said.

One bag at a time

Clark knows goingzero-wastewon'thappen overnight. She said sheand her partner still produce about a half of a Sobeys bag of garbage a week. She's not quite as extreme as those who can fit a year's worth of trash in ajar, although she's working on it.

"The easiest way to go zero-waste is not to go zero-waste all at once. Definitely I didn't do that it was more of a transition period," said Clark.

Unpacked Halifax's next pop-up location isthe Alderney Landing Farmers' Market on June 3.

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