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from the well,-that's-certainly-different dept.
AlterNet reports
Forget plastic bag bans. Berlin is now home to a supermarket that's gotten rid [of all] disposable packaging. Original Unverpackt ("Original Unpackaged") [Google translation], which opened Saturday, is more of a shop, to be exact, but its 350-some products -- including from fruits, vegetables, dry grains and pourable liquids like yogurt, lotion and shampoo -- are dispensed into refillable containers. (Some liquids come in bottles with deposits on them, which is already standard in Germany).
The shop, backed by crowdfunding, is a creative experiment in a new kind of shopping, one that takes the ethics of stores like Whole Foods to a new level. It sells mostly organic products, each of which is labeled with its country of origin, and eschews brand names. Sara Wolf and Milena Glimbovski, the duo behind the project, were driven by the slogan[1] "Let's be real, try something impossible."
It remains to be seen if the store's scalable -- and whether it will catch on with the public. One "group of Germans" interviewed by NPR Berlin[2] complained that the store "looks too pretty and nice, and too bourgeois"; CityLab characterized such sentiments as reflecting a sense that "living a supposedly pared-down, less wasteful life is essentially a lifestyle hobby for people with enough spare cash to play at green dress-up." But while many of the products offered, perhaps because they're organic, tend to skew toward the pricier end of things, others are equivalent or cheaper than standard supermarket fare, one German newspaper reports [Google translation]. And a virtue of the fill-your-own-container model is that customers can purchase ingredients in exact amounts, meaning they don't have to overspend for food they don't need.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Monday September 22 2014, @01:08AM
No brand names? I understand not taking Kellog's or whatever, but being able to identify the producer of a good seems like a good thing, not a bad thing.
subicular junctures
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 22 2014, @04:07AM
How is putting your trust in some faceless corporation half a world away better than trusting your local grocer?
...and you might rethink your statement if you knew more about that Kellogg dude. [wikipedia.org]
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg opened a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, where he practiced his unusual methods for maintaining health, including colonic irrigation, electrical stimulus and sexual abstinence, vegetarianism, and physical exercise.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday September 22 2014, @11:59AM
Except the abstinence (his views were quite extreme [wikipedia.org]), I don't see something that comparing with what one can see today:
- colonic irrigation - you reckon is weirder than faecal transplant [wikipedia.org]? The way I read, he used yogurt [wikipedia.org] as a medium for what he found as beneficial gut flora.
- electrical stimulus - see transcranial electric/magnetic simulation [sciencedaily.com]
- vegetarianism - I have nothing to object provided that we agree that pork and beef are some extraordinary tasty vegetables
- physical exercise - yes, is healthy, the only problem I have with it is that it steals to much time from the hard work of being a couch potato.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Monday September 22 2014, @10:16PM
ha! over here Kellogg's and Sanitarium are competitors, Sanitarium is owned by the mormons. imagine naming your company after something as horrible as a sanitarium... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitarium_Health_and_Wellbeing_Company [wikipedia.org]