Ever tried going plastic free? Not easy, is it?

Several of our customers at Just Trading of Wallingford are currently giving it a go and coming to us to help them on their way.

Take packaging, for example: you can bring your oats container and simply refill it from our paper sacks.

Our scales ignore the weight of your jar and just weigh our high quality, organic oats.

People are surprised at what good value they are.

If you do forget to bring your containers, Just Trading provides cellophane bags which, like paper, are made from wood pulp.

You can weigh out all manner of dried goods from rice to almonds to apricots to chickpeas – or ask our assistant to do it for you.

Refilling is a bit of an obsession at Just Trading.

You can refill your washing up liquid, laundry liquid, shampoo, shower gel or hand soap.

That way you save money and plastic.

If you are short of time, leave your bottles with us or browse the shop while we refill for you.

We have been minimising packaging for years.

Most of our products are not double wrapped – much of our soap is not wrapped at all.

The only plastic carrier bags that we have ever given out are ones that our customers bring in to be re-used.

If you are looking for alternatives to plastics you may find them at Just Trading.

Wooden toys, wooden brushes – even toothbrushes – ceramic storage jars, recycled aluminium dishes, cotton buds with paper stems.

We have not solved the toothpaste tube problem yet, but the days of tins of tooth powder are long gone.

We are also happy to refill your water bottle any time.

After all, UK tap water has much more stringent quality rules than bottled water, so let’s drink it.

Just Trading cannot claim to be plastic free, but it is one of the sustainability issues that we think about when making decisions about the shop and what to stock.

Plastic is an amazing manmade material and, of course, we all embraced it’s usefulness.

Going plastic free is hard, but if we all reduced our use of plastics to one tenth of what it is now, and disposed of plastic thoughtfully, what a difference that would make!