The first thing you notice when you enter Natural Weigh , Chloe and Rob Masefields small shop in the Welsh town of Crickhowell, is the enticing smell of food. Then you see that people have brought their own containers and bottles and are filling them with rice, pasta, seeds, oils and beauty supplies. They then pay for their products by weight.

Zero-waste or plastic-free shops , which sell nothing wrapped in plastic, are springing up worldwide, a groundswell of consumer protest over both the sheer wastefulness of resources in modern packaging and the impact that the worlds most ubiquitous material is having on wildlife and the environment. Many of the shopkeepers report a growing enthusiasm among their customers for a simpler, more sustainable lifestyle.

The Masefields shop is one of the nearly 60 plastic-free shops in the United Kingdom known to have opened in the last 18 months. It has been a great success, says Chloe. Trade is growing all the time. We both worked for environmental organizations and were shocked at the amount of plastic we saw everywhere. We would pick up pieces on our walks and see some were 15 years old. We were just so frustrated that we could not buy anything without it coming covered in plastic.

Plastic-free aisles are becoming common in supermarkets across Europe, and shops selling groceries without packaging have opened in the United States, Canada, Australia and mainland China. In Berlin, Germany, a plastic-free supermarket now sells over 600 products .