No Waste To Go grocery store, located in My An Ward, Ngu Hanh Son District and run by Ms Ho Hoang Oanh, is one of the first Da Nang’s grocery stores saying "no" to disposable packaging as well as having a bunch of recycling products.

Products at No Waste To Go are sold in glass jars to reduce single-use packaging. Photo: P.LAN

A first glance at the No Waste To Go grocery store reveals a small, beautiful space with a clean green space and goods are sold in both large and small glass jars arranged neatly on wooden shelves installed along the wall.

The store offers to customers over 400 goods that are clean products and derived from nature, ranging from food such as dried and processed food, spices, cosmetics such as essential oils, dishwashing liquid, cleaning liquid flooring, washing liquid, shampoo, toothpaste to household items such as brushes, toothbrushes, containers and aromatherapy

As shared by Ms Ho Hoang Oanh, founder and CEO of No Waste To Go,  this grocery store was opened in 2019 to reduce plastic waste and change customers’ habit of using single-use plastic bags or containers gradually. As an active person in environmental activities, Ms Ho Hoang Oanh decided to start her brainchild zero-waste grocery model business with 3 keywords  “fulfil”, “reuse” and “recycle”.

No Waste To Go operates on the principle that customers bring their own containers such as bottles, jars, boxes to buy products they need even 2g of ground pepper, a few tablespoons of turmeric powder according to their demands to avoid redundancy.

Customers can also bring used shampoo bottles, washing liquid bottles to the store to refill. No Waste To Go also has free-of-charge old bottles and jars washed for customers to reuse.

Moreover, Ms Oanh asks distributors to minimize the accompanying packaging. She also looks for products having as little packaging as possible to introduce to customers. Typically, there is a convenient shampoo bar like a bath soap which does not need to be stored in any kind of bottle. The shop’s materials are selected based on criteria of non-toxicity to humans, high biodegradability, and causing no harm to aquatic organisms.

On top of that, No Waste To Go also have a special corner for recycling items where people can bring unused items such as old clothes, books, boxes, bottles and jars so that those in need can pick them up for free. In addition, the store often collects recyclable waste and has collaborated with some factories to make tables, chairs, and furniture from recyclable waste to prolong the product's life cycle.

Ms Oanh's start-up journey was also as arduous as many others. Especially, the store had only a few customers in the first 4 months, so she actively participated in environmental groups, bringing models to exhibitions at fairs selling clean agricultural products to promote.

In the first year, No Waste To Go reduced 4,322 plastic packaging and plastic bags and this figure increased to 10,800 in the second year. Gradually, people have welcomed this idea and no longer consider it difficult to bring bottles and jars to buy goods.

“There is a stereotype that only people having a good income can pay for environmental protection products. Therefore, people try to use recycled products to engage in environmental protection. I hope this habit will be popular so that stores like No Waste To Go will become normal. In the next 5 years, my goal is to spread this model widely to the community " said Ms Oanh.

Reporting by PHONG LAN- Translating by T.VY