Underneath my sink, hidden in the back corner, is my bag of bags; an engorged Duane Reade shopping bag overflowing with tan, white and black plastic bags accrued over years of grocery store trips, where clerks dutifully doubled bagged my boxes of spaghetti, bags of flour and jars of spices. I imagine I'm not alone in my plastic bag hoarding, that others must feel the shame of acquiring yet another piece of future landfill- and ocean-clogging garbage. But remembering that tote bag can be so difficult.
But at least one optimistic New Yorker is taking a giant leap beyond the reuse-recycle method of packaging and portable bagging—in fact, she's trying to get rid of all of that one-use stuff to begin with. Meet Sarah Metz, a pediatric occupational therapist who's begun a Kickstarter to help fund and found The Fillery, a packaging-free, zero waste grocery store she's hoping to open in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn sometime in the near future.
Her goals are lofty: re-train New Yorkers to keep an eye towards the environment, by "offering alternatives to the plastic entombed, chemical laden options which are ubiquitous in both pantries and landfills worldwide." Instead of shelves lined with box after box, imagine bulk bins and barrels brimming with grains, beans and spices—all waiting to be scooped into reusable glass jars or poured into durable fabric sacks.
We spoke with Metz about her goals and her Kickstarter—she's hoping to raise $15,000 in the next 22 days—the frustrations of NYC grocery stores, how America is once again lagging behind the global waste reduction movement and whether we stubborn plastic users of NYC can ever change our habits of convenience.
How did you settle on opening The Fillery in Brooklyn? I live in Prospect Heights and I've lived there for about nine years, so of course it would be wonderful to be in my own neighborhood. That is also where I conducted the market research. I've always been frustrated with the grocery options in that area; within a 10 block radius of where I live, there are maybe 50 bodegas and five or six grocery stores. None of [the grocery stores] offer bulk and I also find that the quality of the produce there is not fantastic. So overall, the quality of the grocery options in my area is not great.
Also, as you probably know, it's a very changing area, all of Brooklyn is. I want it to be a place where anybody and everybody is comfortable and wants to be and wants to shop. Community development and community engagement is really important to me, so I want it to be something that people who have lived in the neighborhood for 30 or 40 years benefit from, and also people who are going to live in the seven-eight story condo that's going up. So it's partly convenience but partly also because I think it's an area where this type of store would do well.
How much impact can one store like the Fillery have on landfill congestion? That's really, really hard to estimate, and of course, for one store, it would be very tough for it to have a significant impact. On average, Americans generate about four and a half pounds of waste per day, which is a lot, as you can imagine. Not all of that is packaging waste, but one study that I came across in my research found that if one American family were to buy all of their peanut butter, for example, in bulk for a year, then that one family would divert seven pounds of waste from a landfill. So that's one family for a year, for one item.
One store is not going to make a huge impact globally, of course, but one of the things that I would really like The Fillery to do besides diverting waste is educating consumers and giving them more sustainable options and getting people to really start thinking in terms of their purchasing habits. To be thinking in a more eco-conscious way as they are consumers, and not only how they've purchased things, but also how they use the things that they purchase. Looking at the things they're purchasing in terms of the life of that item. What are alternatives that might be more sustainable and longer-lasting? So for me it goes beyond the amount of waste we're diverting from the landfill to helping people be more conscious about their choices and their purchasing.
Sarah Metz, founder of The Fillery (Stephanie Metz, Purpose & Design)
To that point, if The Fillery is successful and you open, is this a model that you can see being repeated in other parts of the city and other parts of the state and so on and so forth until we have a different model for what we perceive as a grocery store? I would absolutely love to. It is a model that is expanding in many other countries. Where so many things about the environment are concerned, the United States is often last in line to sign up. Throughout Europe, stores are popping up all over the place, so I spent the month of August in Europe, and visited a number of stores there. Germany and France, I would say, are the two sort of front-runners where this is concerned. One opened in Berlin and then they're popping up all over France, so they are already becoming sort of mini chains in other places, and it seems like they're doing very well, at least enough to expand. So I would love to see that happen here.
Getting into more specific things about The Fillery itself, would a person be able to do all of their grocery shopping at The Fillery? And if not, what are the items that you're not going to be selling and what kinds of things are you going to be selling? What's the landscape going to look like inside the store? So it is mostly going to be dry goods from bulk bins—the gravity dispensers and scoop bins—everything from different types of flour and grains to nuts and seeds and dried fruit and beans, at least 150 different spices, teas and coffees, all of these things.
We're staying away mostly from perishables, but we will likely have a small dairy case. We're going to be working with Ronnybrook farms and stocking their bottled milk, and also likely butter and eggs. But for the most part we're not going to have perishables for a couple reasons. One, as I said, there are lots of bodegas and several grocery stores in the area. But two, space is always a limiting factor in Brooklyn and in all of New York City, so just in terms of space and also to really stick with the concept, it's going to be mostly dry goods. We're also gonna be a CSA pickup point, so we're hoping to do that two to three times a week.
Describe the vessels that you'll be providing to customers when they come to get their product. Customers will have the option of bringing their own containers; that could be cookie jars, that could be cloth or cotton sacks. We will also be selling some of those things, like reusable bulk bags that most bulk stores carry. We'll be selling jars, mostly glass; I can't think of anything that's plastic that we'll be selling. A lot of the lids on these kinds of things are plastic, but we'll be avoiding that as much as possible. So mostly glass, jars both for solids and for liquids, tins for the teas.
If someone came in with a plastic bag that they'd gotten from another grocery store would they be shouted out of The Fillery? Or would you applaud them for reusing a product that would ordinarily get thrown out. [laughs] No, I would definitely applaud them for reusing it and hope that they recycle it when they're done with it.
A rendering of The Fillery (Stephanie Metz, Purpose & Design)
Will the design of the store be eco-friendly as well? Have you thought about how that's going to come together as well? I have. My sister is an architect and she's in the process of starting her own architecture firm, and she'll be focusing on the sustainable designs, so we'll be using a lot of repurposed materials and if that's not possible we'll definitely source sustainable products. But yeah, her eco-friendly ideas definitely dovetail with the goals of The Fillery.
Do you think that people—the customers, Americans in general, people in NYC—will be able to get over the convenience factor of just walking into a store, picking up a prepackaged item off the shelf and walking out the door? Do you think we're capable? I hope so. That's one of my concerns. I do somewhat worry about the lifestyle that is so prevalent here, and it's just the fast pace, and whatever is fastest and easiest. So I think there's a big change, a big shift that we're seeing in general, where people are focusing a lot more on sustainable practices. Also, a lot more people are becoming more aware of the food that they're consuming, and the Slow Food movement is creeping in and so my hope is that people really will get back to cooking at home.
We'll do what we can to cater to some of those needs, meaning, we'll have a quick and easy pancake mix, we'll have different spice blends which can make some of these things faster and easier. But another movement that's starting to pick up the pace is the zero waste movement. And a lot of people are starting to shop more this way. Brooklyn tends to attract hip young people on the forefront of trends so, hopefully this will be one of them.
What drew you to the Kickstarter model over, let's say, finding an investor or someone to help get you off the ground? So I actually do have an investor, so this is not gonna be my only source of start-up capital. But in terms of Kickstarter, I think of it as a platform that can really get a conversation going and generate an idea that doesn't necessarily happen in other places. We're definitely using it to help our start-up capital, but I also really love the idea of other people being a part of our idea and feel like they're making a difference in some way, too, and cheering it on. It shows who our supporters are and who the people are that are gonna be interested. It helps educate us about who our consumers might be. And, like I said, it's a great way to generate awareness and get people talking about it and on board.
You can find more information about The Fillery on their Kickstarter page and at TheFillery.com
