Ernie’s Zero Waste Shop opened its doors in May 2019. The journey started in 2018 when we opened our online store which had a range of vegan and environmentally friendly products. We soon realised this wasn’t going far enough so we quickly transitioned into a completely plastic free store.
We did a few markets in and around Norwich and it soon became clear that there was a growing market for zero waste shopping. After a lot of deliberation we decided opening a physical zero waste shop was something we really wanted to do so set about achieving it. We decided to Crowdfund to raise the funds and thanks to the amazing support from local and national people and businesses we achieved our target and we were on our way.
We got the keys to our first shop on May 1st 2019 and after a couple of weeks of setting it up we opened our doors for the first time on May 18th 2019. After expanding our range of products we soon realised we would need a bigger space so in August 2021 we got the keys to our new shop in Anglia Square which gave us almost 5x the space of our previous shop. This allowed us to introduce freezers, an oat milk dispenser, a peanut butter machine and an ever expanding range of food items.
What do we hope to achieve?
- To provide a wide range of unpackaged food eliminating all plastic waste for our customers
- To offer a cleaning products refill station where old bottles can be refilled
- To offer a wide range of plastic free alternatives to everyday products
- To ensure everything in our shop and on our website is vegan friendly and cruelty free
- To ensure our prices are as affordable as possible and to constantly check our prices against supermarkets.
- To always offer advice and help to anyone who needs it about how reduce plastic waste
- To promote an environmentally friendly, plastic free lifestyle