Waste Not, Want Not
Package Free In Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Considering I’m usually preaching to the choir, you may already know about Lauren Singer and her famous jar of trash. As Marie Kondo and minimalism collided with zero waste as trends picking up steam, she was the ultimate poster child, albeit an extreme case. I mean, who has only a mason jar’s worth of trash for FOUR YEARS? Well, her, obvs (see here if you want to know about it.)
The rest of us make small improvements as we can accommodate them and strive to continue to do so on our quest of low impact living. Personally, I’ve composted by dragging pounds & pounds of food waste into Union Sq from Queens and Brooklyn and not been bothered by it, thinking of the bigger picture. I also recycle textiles, corks, Brita filters and batteries, as well as any electronics- all pretty easy to do with the cooperation of the City of NY and Whole Foods supplying collection facilities.
So, I was pretty excited to see what this pop-up, Package Free, had in store to help make lives even less impactful on the environment. Singer teamed up with another well-known face in the eco-world of NYC, Daniel Silverstein, a fashion designer known for zero waste in his work. He was working the store when I called in and some starstruck visitors were taking selfies with him- awww, cute. Loved that they knew who he was.
The store is stocked with the expected items (see their website) and was pretty much what you’d expect from a store that eschewed packaging and clean living, including Singer's own brand of laundry products, The Simply Co.. Classes and lectures are also offered in the space, helping create conversation in addition to educating. A temporary space for now, if proven successful, a more permanent spot may be up for consideration.
As the amount of people (re-)considering their environmental footprint increases, stores like this should become more commonplace- as they are in Europe. Awareness is a great start and, let's remember, small actions, amplified, have large impacts.
