Package free Bristol!

So our Van life “trial” started a few weeks ago, which meant reducing a lot of our daily facility uses and living in a simpler more minimalist way. For this I thought being package free would be easy!

. . Turns out it’s quite difficult to be package free on the road . . . especially if your partner isn’t doing the pledge with you.

What I would do is buy all I could without packaging or in packaging without plastic, and my partner would buy a few packaged items. In this way I felt I was cheating my pledge as although I still tried to buy package free we are living and cooking together in the van.

I continue to do my best for this year but will prepare better next time for being Package free in the Van.

One thing I kept my eye out for on our travels was of course package free shops and luckily Bristol is quite switched on in this way. We were invited by a friend to visit North St in Southville, which had quite a few package free options! I was thrilled.

Here are the places we visited . . . ALL on North Street, Southville, Bristol.

1.Southville Packagefree shop and Deli are across the road from each other and are packaged with a lot of package free goodies such as coffee beans, nuts, grains, laundry liquids, oils, teas and even a refilling station for oat milk! Which is great if you don't have time to make your own!

I refilled on buckwheat here and it was surprisingly good value!

2.Health Unlimited - a great little shop right next to southville Deli. Here there are many alternative sustainable solutions for beauty and health care such as reusable pads, creams, shampoos, bath bombs for those lucky folk with bathtubs and also burning sage. There seemed to be a lot of items from small businesses here also. Keeping it local!

I got some sage and a few face oils here and again it was great value for the products.

3. Parsons Bakery - I have to give this wee cafe a shout as they were SUCH good value. A coffee with oat milk was only £1 and they let me use my reusable cup! They also sold some yummy vegan bakes and pastry rolls for a good price. This is also near southville deli.

4. Zero Green - This was probably my favourite package free shop just for the sheer variety of products. Firstly I'm aways very happy to find package free noodles as I'm a big noodle fan! They sell everything you could possibly need package free and also to our surprise we found refill tahini, which is another favourite of both mine and my partner. He was convinced and filled a jar full of beautiful organic tahini, £1 for 100ml. Pretty good deal.

They had the kombucha refill bar which I took advantage of and also as well as the usual selection of nuts grains etc, there was a frozen refilling section, which you can see in the picture had pastries, peas, berries etc. This is a goldmine for people with a freezer . . unfortunately we don't even have a fridge in the van so these items were of no use to us in this time.

You are able to donate and take containers there also. So if you are short on containers when mesmerised by all the package free products this is a very useful and sustainable option.

Lastly they had some beautiful organic, vegan little chocolates, fudges etc which caught my eye.

Lots of little gems and amazing things in here. I highly recommend Zero green.

5. Hugos - Was just one of the many grocers on North St in Southville with mostly package free fruits and vegetables as well as stunning bouquets of locally grown flowers. I didn't buy anything from this one but it was just so refreshing to see this presentation of fresh plastic free groceries on the street. It brought a lot of colour and life to the place.

6. Unnamed Grocers - can also be found on North St southville and had plastic free cucumbers!!! Totally worth a mention. I was thrilled!

7. Rod & Ruby's - I have to give this place a mention. We met some pretty awesome people during our short time passing through Bristol and one of our newly made friends has her own authentic Italian cafe situated in the central part of Bristol in college square.

My partner is Italian so of course we had to pay a visit and check out the fresh patisserie section. The wee Italian sweets were quite amazing with such variety, and of course package free!

So to conclude, I pretty much fall in love with Bristol every time I visit and this time was no different, if not more so. If you live in Bristol . . It seems very possible to be Package free :-)