Alex Powell chats to the zero waste heroes behind Trixie’s Pantry, Broomhill’s latest sustainable shopping venture.
The beginning of September marks many things: the onset of Autumn, a return to school or work, and, since 2008, Zero Waste Week. By challenging members of the public to reduce their waste for five days, this annual campaign aims to promote practical ways for us all to preserve resources. With the average UK person producing 7 times their body weight in waste every single year, just one week of small changes can make a big difference.
Zero waste or ‘refill’ stores present some of the easiest (and most delicious!) opportunities to minimise the environmental impact of our everyday lives. By enabling customers to buy only what they need, and to do so using their own containers, this concept provides a hassle-free way to shop more sustainably. Zero waste shops have skyrocketed in popularity over the last few years, with over 100 popping up across the UK between 2017 and 2019. Many of us however remain unaware of their presence, or are simply unsure how to use them. Utilising your local refill shop could be a significant step towards securing a more sustainable future, and one that might even be right on your doorstep.
Opening its doors in April 2024, ‘Trixie’s Pantry’ is the newest addition to Sheffield’s expanding zero waste shopping scene. Founded by Sam and Taylor Ogle-Timson, two newlyweds with a passion for all things green, the store has become an essential part of my weekly grocery shop; I often wonder how I went without their freshly ground peanut butter or delicious granola for so long! In honour of Zero Waste Week, I caught up with the couple to discuss all things sustainability, and discover the inner workings of one of Broomhill’s hidden gems.
The shopfront at Trixie’s Pantry in Broomhill. Image Credit: Alex Powell.
Waste Not, Want Not: Zero Waste Basics
Q. Could you explain the premise of zero waste shopping?
SAM: A zero waste shop works by taking a bulk product, maybe 16 kilos of pasta or 25 kilos of rice, and selling that per gram to a customer. The idea of this is to significantly reduce the amount of packaging required for a product to reach its consumer. As a result, zero waste shopping contributes a lot less plastic waste to the environment, and is a much better way of buying groceries (for the planet).
Q. What sort of products can you buy at Trixie’s Pantry?
SAM: We stock all of the pantry goods: all of your herbs, spices, sugars, flours, pastas and rices. We also sell a variety of teas and are expanding our coffee selection pretty soon. We have a lot of household cleaning products and things like body wash, shampoo and conditioner. Our bestseller is our oat milk, of which we’ve gone through around 100 litres at this point!
Some of the wide range of products available to purchase from Trixie’s Pantry, including their bestseller: Minor Figures’ oat milk! The shop also utilises gravity bins filled with nuts, rice, seeds, pasta and much more. Image Credit: Alex Powell.
Q. What inspired you to set up a zero waste shop in Sheffield?
SAM: One of the things I did whilst in my (Sheffield Students’ Union Welfare & Sustainability) officer job was a talk with Eddie from Our Cow Molly, who said you really have to put your money where your mouth is. If you want there to be glass milk bottles instead of plastic, you need to buy glass milk bottles. That’s your own little way of telling companies what you want. That premise was a huge inspiration for us.
We also recognised that there was something missing in Broomhill. There’s Unwrapped in Crookes, The Refill Tree in Sharrow Vale, The Bare Alternative on Abbeydale Road, so many (zero waste shops) in these little communities. We wanted a way for the community in Broomhill to be served as well, and everything fell into place quite nicely to make it a possibility.
Q. Why the name ‘Trixie’s Pantry’?
TAYLOR: Trixie’s Pantry is named after our little rescue puppy Trixie! She’s very passionate about reducing waste - whether it’s crumbs, dried pasta, peanut butter or literally anything on the floor, she will hoover up whatever she can find so fast that it only felt right. As the aim of our shop is to reduce both food and plastic waste, we thought it would be a good way to honour her and her mission.
Trixie, the shop’s famous namesake. Image Credit: Alex Powell.
Spotlight on Sustainability
Q. Zero Waste Week is all about minimising the excess we create, but do you believe that zero is a realistic goal? Can anything truly be ‘zero waste’?
SAM: Most people who run zero waste shops will admit that it’s a bit of a lie: you can never really be zero waste, only low-waste at best. Due to the nature of food, some plastic often has to be used; nuts, for example, can’t be stored in paper bags long-term because they will secrete their oils into the paper. Packaging can often be circular, and we adopt that strategy wherever possible. Companies are doing what they can to reduce their footprint and, unfortunately, that often has to come with trade-offs. Where we can, we make the process as zero waste as possible.
Q. How do you minimise the environmental impact of the products you sell at Trixie’s Pantry to get as close to zero waste as you can?
SAM: Where we can, we try to source our products as locally as possible. When it’s suitable, we make sure our produce is UK-grown. If it isn’t, we support local businesses and co-operatives especially.
TAYLOR: Our tea and sweets are sourced from Sheffield companies, and our coffee is roasted about a mile up the road by Frazer’s Roasters. When we go to pick up our coffee, we collect (the beans) in huge refill containers, so no packaging is wasted at all as this goes back and forth between the producer and our shop.
Another one of the companies we stock from is called Refill. They’re based in Hampshire so aren’t super local, but the reason we work with them is because all of their packaging is circular. The containers of our washing up liquid and cleaning products are sent back to Refill once we’ve used all of it, and they fill them back up. That’s really nice for us as the process is entirely circular.
SAM: If you look closely at our hand wash, you can see that there’s handwriting on the container from another shop who used it before us. Even when our products arrive pre-packaged, that one package will serve 10-50 people. As long as customers are bringing in their own jars, that’s a significant reduction in the overall waste produced.
Q. Do you think there are any ways that production systems could change to minimise waste even further?
SAM: One of the things I’ve heard about is that there are different types of plastics, including ones using plant material as opposed to traditional hydrocarbons, which are much more recyclable. I don’t know the actual credentials behind it, but I think where possible moving towards more recyclable materials would be a lot better.
Something I’d love to do, though this isn’t likely to happen, would be to bulk buy and distribute at a more central level between zero waste shops. For example, if you were to buy a 100 kilo bag of rice and split that into refill bags to be taken back to each individual shop. That’s a level of coordination and trade agreement that I know is way too complex for the nature of our model at this point in time, but if we’re pipedream thinking!
The Future of Trixie’s Pantry and the UK’s Weekly Shop
Q: Where do you see zero waste shopping in 10-20 years? How do you think it will fit into the market?
SAM: The one thing I do see happening, when it becomes fashionable and profitable enough, is supermarkets shifting more towards our style of shopping. I think they will avoid it for as long as possible, as their current model is more profitable and comes with less risks. At the minute, they can carry on with business as usual.
I’d like us to begin to work together with the other zero waste shops (in Sheffield) and build a proper unity. We’ve seen in Sheffield that (zero waste shopping) works: Unwrapped has been open for over 5 years, and The Refill Tree for just over a year now. It’s a model which has been demonstrated to work, it’s just (a matter of) finding ways for it to work in other places as well and seeing how it does.
Q: What would you like to see from the new UK government to help the zero waste industry continue to grow?
SAM: I think I might be a bit too new to answer that question properly; because we haven’t had a full year of trading, we haven’t yet had to deal with the tax side of things. The fact that we’re such a small business means that we benefit from some of the current systems in play. Increasing the number of grants and subsidies available would obviously be fantastic, but it’s important that these are beneficial and don’t just get abused. I think some other zero waste companies would have a better idea really of what would be most useful.
Q: What are your own personal plans for Trixie’s Pantry and the future of the business?
SAM: So the future for Trixie’s Pantry is… just for us to get through the first year of trading! I would love it if we could be at a secure point. I haven’t really thought about proper next steps, because currently it’s just about making sure the foundations are good enough that if there is ever a bad storm, we’ll be able to sail through it. We don’t know what the next few years will hold. We don’t know what effects global climate change is going to have on most of our produce - I’d obviously like it to be as stable as possible, but we just don’t know.
If we were to open another shop, I’d be looking at somewhere like Kelham Island. It’s definitely the right place for a zero waste shop to be and I’d love for one to get started, even if I was just helping somebody else set one up. Right now it’s just about getting through the day-to-day and preparing for whatever the future holds!
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