Eco Warriors

Plastic free stores are popping up all over London and one of LOTI’s locals is Re:Store, set up by Megan Adams, who herself made a resolution to use less plastic. Located in Hackney Downs Studios with no single-use packaging on site, you can bring your own containers or buy some in the shop, and fill up on wholefoods, nuts & seeds, herbs & spices, tea, coffee, oils, vinegars and household cleaning products. As well as working with local suppliers like Mission (coffee beans roasted in Clapton) and Ombra pasta (from Bethnal Green), the store also stocks a range of lifestyle products like Elephant Box food containers, Chilly’s water bottles and Georganics dental items. Tupperwares at the ready.

restorerefill.co.uk

When it comes to single-use plastics, beauty products and bathroom essentials are some of the worst offenders liquid hand soaps, shower gel, and shampoos often come in packaging that can’t be recycled. Moving away from these products is clearly an essential step to reducing our plastic consumption but of course, we all need to stay clean at the same time! However, we wanted to introduce you to a Londoner, Marta Tarallo, who makes beautiful hand made soaps from all natural ingredients with traditional methods and no waste. Marta also runs soap-making workshops so if you’re feeling inspired, you can learn to make your own. With natural materials and no unnecessary chemicals, the soaps are good for your skin too, so you can have a clean body AND a clean conscience.

bottegazerowaste.com

We all know that unnecessary packaging, single-use plastics and other non-recyclable materials are terrible for the planet both in their manufacture and in their disposal. But avoiding them isn’t always easy unless you really search it out. Enter Ingrid Caldironi’s Bulk Market, a zero waste shop in Hackney where you bring your own containers, fill them up with everything from rice to dog biscuits and head home with zero packaging.

bulkmarket.uk

As Director of the Arcola Theatre in Dalson, Ben Todd has been responsible to making it one of the greenest venues in the UK. With a mission to make it the world’s first carbon-neutral theatre, he has implemented several initiatives over the years to help the theatre reach this goal, adopting greener practices and technologies as well as helping to raise awareness about climate change. From the early days, Ben had solar panels and a carbon-neutral heating system installed and has continued to find new ways to further improve the former paint factory’s environmental impact. If you think about all the bright lights in a theatre it’s clear that lighting is a massive drain on resources and in 2017 Ben teamed up with Phillips in install low energy LED stage lighting which resulted in a 36% power saving. It’s an amazing effort and shows what can be done by companies if a bit of care and thought is put into what energy they use and what they do with waste. There are some great shows on all the time at the Arcola so this is definitely a great one to support – just make sure you walk or hop on your bike to get there!

arcolatheatre.com