We are Bamboo Turtle in the Arcade in Letchworth Garden City in Hertfordshire.
Just over 6 months ago the idea of Bamboo Turtle was born, primarily out of
frustration at not being able to successfully shop waste free. Unfortunately
supermarkets provide a convenient but wasteful way of shopping. Every pasta
packet, toothpaste tube and plastic wrapped broccoli adds to the mountains of
waste that enter our recycling plants at best, or our oceans at worst, taking
hundreds of years to breakdown and enter our food systems. And then we
have food waste. Sometimes all we need is a handful of oats or a teaspoon of
herbs and spices. Shopping at Bamboo Turtle allows you to buy exactly the
amount of food you need in your own package.
So how does it work; any clean container will do: paper, glass, tin, fabric,
plastic (yep plastic, if it’s already in the home then reuse it until it falls apart. It
doesn’t make sense to throw it out when it still has a use). Then it’s a simple
process of ‘bring, weigh, fill and pay’. The empty container is weighed, it’s
then filled with any number of goodies that we sell ranging from pastas, dried
fruits, flour, sugars and more and then we reweigh it at the paying till where
you pay only for what is in your container. By helping yourself and using our
gravity dispensers and ski boots you are in complete control of what and how
much you buy. Simple.
So that’s downstairs, the really exciting stuff is
upstairs!! That’s where you’ll find toilet rolls, shampoos, conditioners, make up
removing face pads, bamboo straws, soaps and many more items. Hopefully
we’ve offered a plastic free alternative to most items that would normally be
over packaged.