DONEGAL’S first ‘zero waste’ store where customers bring their own reusable containers for their food and household items could be open in time for Christmas.
Anna Good and her husband Paul who run Wholegreen, on Church Lane, Letterkenny, have described the response to a survey they posted online as “amazing”.
“We thought that there might have been fifty or sixty replies but we got over two hundred responses to the survey in the first hour alone so we can’t back out now,” Anna said.
The couple are considering scaling back the café and opening a zero-waste shop where nothing for sale comes in pre-packed plastic and customers bring their own jars, bags and containers and fill up with the amount they need.
“The concept is simple. We store bulk foods and products with no plastic or packaging and you bring your own container and only purchase what you need. You can purchase glass and paper bags if you forget you own, with the intention of reusing the next time with the overall impact of reducing your carbon footprint and the damage caused on the planet,” she explained.
Ms Good believes that the public have really ‘caught the wave’ of environmental awareness, especially in relation to single-use plastic, since Covid.
“People are changing their consciousness. I don’t know if this the right time to make the move economically but judging by the positive comments that have been pouring in since last night, hopefully it is. I think it’s time for us to be brave and stick our necks out,” she said.
Wholegreen has been in business in Letterkenny for four and a half years. In that time they’ve expanded the cafe and opened a yoga studio upstairs but they feel now is the right time to look again at the business model.
“The climate is changing and we’re looking to put a lot of our business online, which would be important if there was another lockdown, while we’re also hoping to put a click and collect service for the cafe online.
“At zero waste you can leave your jars and packaging with us in the morning, pre-order online, and you can pick up the shopping on your way home or you can call in and do it yourself.
“It gives us more options in the future. We’re going to scale the cafe back to its original size and concentrate on the take-away side of the business. We’re trying to diversify to protect our business. We’ve always been eco based and we’re changing a lot of our packaging to compostable at the moment,” she said.
There are zeros waste stores in Eglinton (Ethical Weigh) and Belfast (Refill) while there’s a small zero waste section within the Simple Simon shop in Donegal Town.
“With all the Covid craziness over the last few months it has allowed me to step back and re-evaluate my business. During that time, we all got to see the world get a break and I decided I didn’t want to go back to the way we were living,” she said.
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