One bottle at a time, the zero waste movement spreads across London

Source:-newzee

While the average UK household struggles to recycle even half of its waste, for some an entire month’s trash can be filled in a jam jar.
Ander Zabala, a recycling manager from North London is one of a growing number of people who are rejigging their lives to remove non-recyclable packaging, and in doing so providing a market for a plethora of zero waste businesses springing up across the capital.
Heralded by the whirr of its underpowered electric engine and the clink of bottles stacked in crates on the back, Ella Shone's "Top Up Truck" once did dawn duty ferrying milk to the doorsteps of bleary-eyed Londoners.
Twenty years on, and the "milk float" -- once a ubiquitous sight on British streets -- has been retrofitted to serve the 32-year-olds quest to rid the city of single-use plastic.
Furloughed from her sales job during the coronavirus pandemic last spring, Ella Shone ploughed her savings into starting a business to allow people to order bulk goods online without the throway plastic packaging used in supermarkets.
Few households may as yet succeed in reducing their monthly trash to the volume of a jam jar -- the gold standard for proponents of a "zero waste" lifestyle.
Nevertheless, demand for "refill" stores or delivery services that allow people to buy staples from pasta and lentils to shampoo and washing up liquid in reusable containers is growing.
From a low base a decade ago, the market for such unpackaged bulk goods could hit at least 1.2 billion euros by 2030 in the European Union, according to Zero Waste Europe, an anti-waste network.
Shone is planning a Crowdfunder to retool her milk float, hoping to inspire others to adapt her model, including the big supermarkets.
“It would be good to see big corporations’ kind of doing this,” she said. “If this could initiate change, you know, outside of this small little sphere, then that's brilliant.”