Unwrapped Shop
Saving the Planet While Shopping?
The 3rd-semester English class did an experiment. On 22 September 2020 we visited the store „DER SACHE WEGEN“. We wanted to see one of many ways to contribute to saving our planet, which is our semester topic. The store is located at Lychener Straße 47, 10437 Berlin, near Helmholtzplatz. We prepared ourselves by talking about plastic bags and plastic waste and by watching a documentary in class. Then we decided to go to the store. We were 14 students on the field trip. For reasons of hygiene we were divided into three groups.
Inside the shop we saw a lot of containers made of glass and metal. There you can buy unwrapped foods, fruits and vegetables, sweets, hygienic articles, cereals and drinks. You can decide on your own how much you buy. You go through the shop without plastic bags, you need to bring your own containers.
First you weigh your empty containers and bags, then you shop like normally. You need to know that you will use spoons to fill your containers. After you have put a product into the container, it is weighed again at the checkout and you pay for the quantity you buy.
The products have a higher quality than in normal supermarkets, so they are more expensive. If hygiene is very important to you, then this shop isn’t the right place for you. Because they sell their products unwrapped, i.e. without plastic, they might be contaminated with bacteria. The shop is small and there were few customers in the shop when we were there.
The inside of the store has a good, friendly atmosphere, it’s like a vintage store made of wood and metal. The whole store contains no plastic wrapping at all.
To sum up, it was a good experience, and we learned about an alternative to „normal“ supermarket shopping.
Grundkurs e1-3 (Doe): Saving the Planet