The best zero-waste products you need to grow a sustainable garden

The best zero-waste products you need to grow a sustainable garden

Zero-waste shops can be found all over the country – I have two within a five-minute walk from my house. In fact, here in Bristol, we are also lucky to have an old converted milk float, renamed the Oat Float, the city’s first mobile zero-waste shop. It’s amazingly convenient – you can visit it at a designated fortnightly location, or club together with friends and neighbours to book it to come to your street. In our neighbourhood, there’s no excuse when it comes to buying a Tupperware container’s worth of rice or refilling a bottle of washing-up liquid, instead of single-use plastic alternatives. I’d like to be able to buy compost , plant food and other sundries the same way, but it’s harder than you might think to find suppliers. It’s surprising, because in some ways the industry has long since adopted waste-free products, with reusable ton-bags of materials such as soil and gravel, which can be delivered, paper seed packets and cardboard packaging for some items. However, even these aren’t always strictly zero-waste : some are single-use items that create unwanted material, which if not binned, needs to be recycled. Given that gardeners are likely to be a receptive