Check this out!

I don't know how long this concept will take to really be a successful model of an alternate, greener grocery option, especially for "everyone," but it's a really interesting idea, I think!

The concept is a packaging-free grocery store, and one is actually opening soon in Austin, Texas. According to ecoprenuerist.com, the EPA estimates that a whopping 32% of household trash is solely from food packaging. That's way too much!! If you're like us and try to recycle what you can, you might also be amazed at how quickly those boxes, cans and bottles add up. It seems like we no sooner empty our recycling bins then they're overflowing again. That alone makes me believe the validity of the EPA's estimate.

All of this means that someone had a brilliant moment when they developed the idea of this store: in.gredients. (Fun name, right??) Basically, it means that you bring your own packaging, i.e. reusable containers like boxes, cartons and bags. The (HUGE) positive benefit of this is the incredible lack of waste that you would generate just by going to pick up your weekly groceries. The (unfortunate) downside is that if you're like me, you never truly know what you're going to walk out of the store with...if you don't have enough or the right kind of containers, that could really put a damper on your grocery trip. Plus, you might not be wholly comfortable shlupping around empty containers.

In.gredients is the first packaging-free grocery store in the U.S., but there is something of a precedent for this concept already. Londoners already have Unpackaged, which you can read about at http://beunpackaged.com/. Even more interesting, in.gredients is unique in that it is starting through a business plan that relies on crowd funding, raising start-up costs through public donations and incentives.

Personally, I think that the success of this business model lies solely on Americans' willingness to step outside of their comfort bubbles, their zones of tradition. In.gredients (and any other packaging-free store for that matter) will only work if we accept that we have to change how we do things because of the incredible impact that our actions currently have.

Everything that we think of as normal/traditional now was a never-before-thought-of idea at its inception. Would you be willing to try something "radical" in order to lessen your environmental impact?