Last weekend, I was at La Citta Dell’Utopia for a very interesting guided tour about excessive packaging (By the way, La Citta is sort of like a community centre, and I knew about this place because of their annual soup festival and I also used to do yoga here)
Anyway, as it was a Saturday Cart didn’t want to get up as he wanted to savour his non working day (by sleeping), but I really wanted to go, so I went alone. Which was too bad for him, because it was and I had a very nice day.
We went to 3 different places – a non packaged shop, a regular supermarket, back to La Citta to make shampoo and conditioner/Masque using things you could find in the kitchen and finally to a freecycle shop which is like a 2nd hand shop but is non profit (It is an AMAZING shop by the way. SO many things there. Thrifters will LOVE it)
(I might blog about the freecycle shop in the future, just that I didn’t take any pictures as I left early … ehm … X Factor Italia was on and I didn’t want to miss it)
Anyway, I wanted to share with you one of the shops that we went to, which I liked immensely. This shop is called “Negozio Leggero“.
This is one of the 4 owners of the Rome branch by the way, explaining to us, how the shop works – they obtain their stock in bulk, without individual packaging. And customers bring their own containers, jars, cans and bags. This way, you don’t have unnecessary packaging to throw away.
Like if you bought a pack of tea, you throw away the plastic wrapping, and then throw away the individual sachets cover, and then throw away the box when you are done with it. And that’s just for one item. Just imagine how much trash you’d have to take out at the end of the week for a regular family.
Anyway, I really like the shop you reduce wastage here. But mostly because of the lack of packaging, the items are cheaper (even if most of them are organic which is known to be costly) The housewife side of me is always looking for good deals.
There are a lot of interesting things to be found here. Ranging from food :
You could bring your own bottles and choose your own wine.
And you could pick your own flour, rice or tea or biscuits … (This really reminds me of my childhood days when I could go to a mom and pop shop and ask for 50 cents of grated coconut or 1 dollars worth of biscuits)
Apart from food items, there are also other items, such as toiletries :
(I smelled the white tea shower by the way and it smells so heavenly!)
Something that caught my eye was these toothbrushes with exchangeable heads. I like that you could just buy one handle and then change the heads when it’s exhausted. Makes more sense no? And probably more cost effective.
And there were some cosmetics that I might be interested to try out once I’ve used up all of my current mekap (Which will take a bit of time)
I also saw this :
If you don’t know what it is, err … never mind. But for those who do, I’ve been interested in this for a long while now. It’s just that it looks very daunting to put on, and I worry about accidentally dirtying myself. But one day … when I’m braver …
Moving on! There are also detergents for the house – for the floor, the windows, clothes, softener … While I was looking at this, happened to be a lady who brought her own jug to buy a detergent (As a sidenote, there are some supermarkets in Italy which does the same thing)
And this was interesting too! I was staring at it for a few seconds, wondering why a date would be under the toiletries segment when one of the girl in our group explained excitedly how fantastic these are at cleaning her laundry.
They are actually “Soap Nuts” which has a natural chemical which is good for washing and cleaning purposes. Because it is completely plant based, it’s organic, hypoallergenic and biodegradable. I was reading online how it can be used for other purposes too, not only for laundry.
My eyes got caught by these. And in the end, I got for myself some burger mix, some chocolate and some bar of soap.
100g yields 2 fat patties by the way, just add 100ml of water. For about 1.20 euro, I think that’s quite a good deal. I still like Kio Ene veggie burger by the way, but this could be an alternative.
All in all, I had a very nice time here, and looking forward to going there again the next time we need to do grocery shopping 🙂
Negozio Leggero – La Spesa Della Spina
Sidenote : Just out of curiosity, is there a shop like this in the country where you are at? If so, please let me know in the comment box below 🙂
A very interesting shop! I’ve not seen such a shop here yet. Hopefully in the near future.
Hopefully in the future, yes! There are three in Torino though! So Elaine could get some stuff when she needs to … hehe. Lucky her! 🙂
Lucky for Elaine! I was looking at their website. I’d think I come back with my hands full of stuff 🙂
This is awesome! Thanks so much for doing this write up. This is by my alma mater, so I’ve walked by several times but couldn’t figure out what it was. Now that I understand how it works, I’ll definitely pop in next time.
There’s a uni nearby? *mind draws a blank*
Anyway, I think you’d enjoy the shop Natalie. It’s not big, but there are loads of interesting stuff in there … and chocolates! Who doesn’t like chocolates!