Triple Bottom Line inventor asks for a rethink

Serious post alert folks!

Quite a few of you know that here at Re we are interested in the bigger sustainability picture. Whilst we love buying local where we can, and delighting in it, there’s plenty of things that come from further afield. We’re slightly fixated on how larger organisations measure and act on sustainability. Our current pet subject seems is how localised targets are: one company or government gets ‘net zero’ whilst failing to mention the impact on communities elsewhere. This article touches on that. We recommend a read.

John Elkington, who coined the Triple Bottom Line concept originally says also, ‘To truly shift the needle, however, we need a new wave of TBL innovation and deployment. But even though my company, Volans, consults with companies on TBL implementation, frankly, I’m not sure it’s going to be enough. Indeed, none of these sustainability frameworks will be enough, as long as they lack the suitable pace and scale — the necessary radical intent — needed to stop us all overshooting our planetary boundaries.’

Compostables conundrum

Compostable packaging is something we hear about and talk about a lot here at Re. Before we opened we wrote to the companies that manage the waste from our area, to find out what would actually happen to ‘compostable’ or ‘recyclable’ take away cups, for example (we needed to know we were right to just not use them at all: to back up our hunch with facts). We received substantive replies, which basically told us what we needed: avoid, completely.

This morning a customer came in who is a waste management expert and kind enough to spend time answering some of our questions! We were looking, at the time, at a compostable bag, whicih triggered the discussion. This link is a great explainer.

https://recycleforgreatermanchester.com/blog/the-truth-about-compostable-packaging/

We will be looking into this continually, and more in depth, so expect to see some follow up posts as we learn more!

Lindsay

Veganuary options at Re

So many of our customers are vegan. It certainly seems that mindfulness about our relationship to other species and our relationship to the planet in general go happily hand in hand.

We were asked recently if we sold vegan food. We don’t sell convenience food (don’t forget, we are the inconvenience store where you have to fill your own containers!), because it’s largely pre-packed, but from our granola, to our raw, organic chocolate, to our household cleaning products, almost everything we sell in store is vegan - and we are very proud of that!

And we’re aiming to get some amazing vegan savouries on board in the next few weeks to go with your coffee, in store.

Happy new year to you and yours.

Lindsay & Navneet

Tare-ing up the old ways of shopping!

These fantastic scales are pretty much the heart of our shop. They’re fun, easy to use and let you do your own weighing! Basically, you weigh, fill, weigh and pay. That’s it.

If you want to know more, this is how it goes!

1. Weigh your empty container and print your label

2. Fill your container

3. Bring it back to the scales, touch ‘I have a filled container to weigh’

4. Scan the label you printed for your container and select the item you’ve filled with - this takes off the weight of your container.

5. Head to the tills or weigh another container

Bikes, ferries and trains...

The orange building is my old house on Lantau Island, Hong Kong - part of the reason we do what we do, here at Re

It was only three days ago that I realised just how long I’ve been mindful of the environment. This tiny little house (it was about 30ft long, 22ft high and 11ft wide, was on the edge of fields where vegetables were grown and which appeared at the local market - where we bought them, loose, even the leafy greens . We always always had our own bags with us. Even eggs were bought loose! My friend and flatmate, Sam, was much further ahead on the environmental stakes and taught me a lot. As well as cooking amazing vegetarian food at home when I worked in the city - which I got to by bike then ferry then walking. There were no roads at this end of Lantau, and at that point just one road that travelled along and across the island. It’s remarkable how much you can fit on a bike when you’re practiced at it!

This isn’t to say there wasn’t waste - there was, of course. But when everything arrives either by bike or by trolley, it’s automatically reduced. Ferry coffee and noodles were always in polystyrene cups for example. But we always made sure we cut up any rings that held beer cans together, fearful for birds. It’s remarkable that more than 20 years later we still haven’t solved this particular problem across the board.

India was a similar story - for 13 years I took trains or roads rather than fly. Partly because I loved the 9 hour train to Delhi from Amritsar!

So when I was asked what was behind this shop, I think the answer lies somewhere in the stunning places I’ve been fortunate enough to visit, the long long train journeys, and the endless cups of tea in little clay cups!