A zero waste blog. Join me on my journey as I reduce my waste and move towards a simple, vegan and zero waste lifestyle.

Showing posts with label organic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organic. Show all posts

Where To Bulk Buy in Edinburgh | The New Leaf Co-op

on
Monday 18 June 2018
Want to know where to bulk buy in Edinburgh?

Well The New Leaf Co-op has all your zero waste needs.

I discovered this shop last year, and these days I can often be found there scooping chickpeas into jars and looking at all the shelves of spices.

The store is open from Monday to Saturday and is the best place in Edinburgh to buy in bulk. The shop sells loose fruit and veg, bread without packaging, and lots of bulk foods including grains, pulses, pasta, spices, herbs, dried fruit, cleaning products, and they have a nut butter machine!!


 




The staff will happily weigh all your jars and containers for you, but there's also paper bags in the shop if you don't have your own. You can also take your own washing up bottles and fill them with washing up liquid,

I still had a quite a bit of food in my cupboard so I only needed a few things when I popped in at the weekend.


I picked up some chickpeas, vegan chocolate drops, organic apricots, exotic muesli, and rice. I was really excited to find the vegan chocolate drops cause finding vegan chocolate in bulk is not something that happens every day. Plus, it tastes delicious!

If you're in Edinburgh then you should definitely take a visit to The New Leaf Co-op. Remember you don't need any fancy jars or anything. I used a katsu curry sauce jar to fill with apricots and my boyfriend's takeaway container to fill with rice.

This is Edinburgh's biggest bulk buy store, but I'll be blogging about other places in the city you can do some zero waste shopping in the coming months. If you have any suggestions, then please let me know in the comments.

Zero Waste Mascara

on
Monday 11 June 2018

My makeup bag is probably one of the areas of my life that isn't very zero waste. If you know me well then you'll know I don't wear much makeup anyway, but one of my must-have items is mascara. I was previously using drugstore mascara which came in a plastic bottle, but since it ran out a few weeks ago, I decided it was time to find a zero waste alternative.

I found Beauty With Roots for Etsy and it arrived two weeks ago. The mascara itself is comes in a small glass jar with an aluminium lid. Not only is it zero waste, but this particular one is completely vegan and organic too. It uses lots traditional herbs, so it's a lot better to be using near your eyes than all the chemicals that are used in high street mascaras.

It goes on really well and lasts all day so I definitely have no complaints about how it looks on, but it can be a little tricky to get it out of the jar. If you stick the whole mascara brush in (note: this doesn't come with the mascara) then you'll end up with lots on the brush that will go to waste since your not putting the brush back into the bottle like you would normally.

However, you can stick the tip of the brush in the pot to put on your lashes and then use the whole wand to brush it through then it works fine. I just takes a couple of tries to get used to it, especially if you've been buying mascara in a standard shop bought bottle for years.

Overall, it's been a great product so far and I'd definitely recommend it. I'll be blogging about the rest of my zero waste makeup swaps in the coming months, so stay tuned!