AMSTERDAM: A supermarket in the Netherlands wants to make it easier on the planet and easier for its customers to avoid adding to the mountains of plastic waste generated every day. On Wednesday, the supermarket, Ekoplaza, an upmarket chain, introduced what it billed as the world’s first plastic-free aisle in a store in Amsterdam.
There, shoppers found groceries, snacks and other sundries but not an ounce of plastic. The items are packaged in compostable materials or in glass, metal or cardboard. Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet, an advocacy group that has pushed the concept, said the initiative was “a landmark moment for the global fight against plastic pollution.”
The nation is one of more than 40 around the world that have banned, restricted or taxed the use of plastic bags, including France and Italy. In the Netherlands, free plastic bags were banned two years ago, after a European Union directive was passed in 2015 to phase them out. At the time, the country of about 17 million used around three billion bags each year, most of which ended up in the trash.
Ekoplaza has promised to expand the plastic-free idea to all of its 74 stores by the end of the year.
