Completing a full supermarket shop without purchasing a single item coated in plastic is a task even the most eco-conscious would struggle with. Britain’s top 10 supermarkets use 810,000 tonnes of single-use plastic every year, over 1.1 billion single-use bags and 1.2 billion plastic bags for fruit and vegetables annually, according to a report from the Environmental Investigation Agency and Greenpeace (eia-international.org), so it’s no surprise that the widespread use of plastic has sadly become so ingrained in our daily lives. But thanks to the innovative thinking of Jeanette Wong and Tom Pell, doing a supermarket sweep that’s free of disposable packaging is a reality. After feeling frustrated and overwhelmed by all this waste, they created The Clean Kilo, a zero-waste supermarket – we caught up with them to find out more.
The Clean Kilo is a shop with no packaging, and the idea is to bring your own container in order to cut down on plastic. We realised how detrimental plastic pollution was, so we started by reducing waste in our own household but we found it very difficult to do so, which is why we came up with the idea of The Clean Kilo. Back in 2017 when we came up with the concept, there was only one other plastic-free supermarket in the UK. I guess we wanted to set up The Clean Kilo because there weren’t many eco-friendly options out there.