in.gredients – A Zero Waste Food Store in Austin, Texas

You may have heard the rule about shopping on the perimeter of the grocery store to find the healthy stuff. One grocery store in Austin, Texas, has taken this to the next level by completely eliminating the middle section of the store, where you would usually find a lot of processed food that is not so good for you. Instead, in.gredients offers fresh, seasonal foods without any kind of wasteful packaging.

“At our store,” they say, “you won’t need packaging to convince you of what you’re buying.” Just like there is no waste in nature, real food doesn’t need a label to tell you it’s good.

in.gredients is “a collaborative effort between business, community, and consumers with the goal of eliminating food-related waste while supporting local businesses and farmers.” The store’s top priority is to reduce the amount of waste we all produce and encourage us to reuse what we have. Every day, over 700,000 tons of garbage is sent to American landfills. Packaging waste accounts for nearly 40% of that. Just by learning to bring and reuse our own containers when we shop for basics, we can help lower that number significantly.

When making decisions and choosing products to carry in-store, in.gredients considers the following core ethos, weighing each of them with this decision-making methodology:

Reduce, reuse: There’s no waste in nature. Waste is a human invention. As good stewards of our environment, our top priority is to reduce the amount of waste we produce and reuse what we have. Being package-free radically limits our waste generation. Our business will be waste free; your home can be waste free too.

Local: Sourcing our food locally is extremely important. By buying and selling locally, we can stimulate the local economy, reduce the energy being used to transport food from region to region, and avoid packaging and preservatives since the product doesn’t need to stay “fresh” for weeks on end.

We’ll limit your choices based on what’s in.season — a new but very old idea. While we’ve come to enjoy the omniscient availability of every kind of produce, having produce that’s out of season here shipped in from the Southern Hemisphere is costly and wasteful.

Real Food: Food with pure ingredients is healthier than food with chemically-manufactured preservatives and artificial dyes. While almost all of the products we sell in our store are basic ingredients, not prepared foods, when we choose prepared products we ensure they contain pure ingredients and avoid products with artificial additives or controversial ingredients (see our list of banned ingredients for reference).

Package-Free: We seek to eliminate unnecessary packaging in our microgrocer — on the front end (our shelves) and back end (how we get products from our vendors). We promise to offer our products in bulk and work with vendors who will deliver their products to us sustainably.

The company knows that they along will not create the change needed in the food packaging industry, but they hope to begin by teaching people in their community how a few simple changes can help reduce waste and promote a healthier way of life. Community is a big part of the vision for in.gredients and the store itself is designed to facilitate engagement.

Based on customer demand, a volunteer program — called in.volved — was started shortly after the store opened in the summer of 2011. In addition to helping with store build-out efforts and events at in.gredients’ storefront, the program encourages positive community engagement through a variety of other service opportunities, including local non-profits and schools that focus on educating the community about the importance of healthy, sustainable lifestyles. In exchange for their time, volunteers receive reward points that can be redeemed for perks or store credit.

“Package-free and zero-waste are new frontiers in the grocery industry, so we’re pioneers in relatively uncharted territory. Because of this our ethos can’t be fully reflected by our business model, since local regulations, consumer demand, public perception, and the norms of the food industry are not aligned in pursuit of a common goal or always interested in sustainability. Nothing in.gredients does as a store, therefore, can be the perfect sustainable shopping option in your area — but we want to be the absolutely best option.”

Even if you don’t live anywhere near Austin, you can do your part by starting to bring your own produce and bulk bags to the grocery store. Once you make it a habit, like bringing reusable bags, it’s really not that hard.