This is a shout out to my favorite grocery store of all time Greenstar Coop, in Ithaca, NY. They introduced me to bringing my own containers to refill as I bought my groceries. I would refill my bottles, sacks and jars, along with my regular reusable cloth bags to hold the newly refilled containers. This was almost 15 years ago, and shopping like that still resonates with me.
It is so much more satisfying to bring my own bag and plop my own tofu block into it, rather than buying a pillow pack of tofu I can't even see. It may be the crunchy granola in me, but I do like to have that hands on connection.
Now, the United States is about to welcome its first completely container free grocery store. This new store, called In.Gredients, will offer all items in bulk. You bring in your container, weigh and label it, fill (or refill) and the weight of the packaging will be deducted when you go through check out. Watch their brillian video!