Meet Lucy at Greenpoint Market, Sayer Street’s Newest Sustainable Retailer

Greenpoint Market exists to find ways to be more gentle to the earth.

Hi, I'm Lucy, and I have unending love for the place that bore David Bowie, grows ranunculus in spring, houses the glowing sea turtle, and gives us everything we need.

As imperfect people living in a throw-away economy, we know our individual buying habits will always be full of contradictions. But even so, we do what is possible in our lives to produce less plastic, divert rubbish from our landfills and oceans, and try our best to work harmoniously with the needs of the planet.

My own low waste might not look Instagrammable (a bit more five-year-old, curry-stained lunch boxes than beautiful Japanese bamboo bentos), and together we definitely won’t be perfect, but we’ll keep learning and doing what we can.

I hope that taking these small steps together might just help us enact the bigger changes towards sustainability we’re all craving.

Thoughtfully chosen skin and hair care products like reusable makeup remover pads, cleansing oil, moisturisers, shampoo bars for different hair types, and combs, brushes, and hair picks. And body care like safety razors, deodorants, and soap savers. 

Refill cleaning products like laundry detergent, washing up liquid, and surface cleaner in circular jerry cans, which means that we send the containers back to the manufacturers to get cleaned and reused.  

Plus home essentials like dish cloths, loo roll, and reusable coffee cups. 

I spent the past four years in America. Being there shocked me into environmental activism. It seemed like waste was a huge design flaw in every part of life; the way products were made, packaging was created, and even how buildings and infrastructure were built.

But North Brooklyn is where I met some of the smartest, most engaged and interesting people working towards better, cleaner communities. From small projects like picking up rubbish at the park and setting up local composting, to large campaigns to stop fracked gas infrastructure in New York. I loved the sense of community, and the chance to hang out with big-hearted people with only the desire to do some good in common. So Greenpoint Market is an homage to them and the ideals they generously passed onto me.

It’s important not to blame individuals for their plastic waste. Our systems are designed for us to fail at being perfectly low waste. But if we’re able to join the cultural movement towards sustainability, it will help move the dial against some of the worrying ways single use plastic is harming the earth. 

Plastic breaks down into smaller pieces called microplastics. They ultimately end up everywhere, cluttering beaches and choking marine wildlife, as well as in the food chain.

Microplastics (fragments of any type of plastic less than 5 mm in length) are ubiquitous in our environment and can be found in all corners of the earth. 

• In a month, we ingest the weight of a 4x2 Lego brick in plastic, and in a year, the amount of plastic in a fireman's helmet - WWF International.
• Scientists in London found unexpectedly large quantities of microplastics had fallen in the rain and were being carried in the air. - Guardian
• Globally, 100,000 marine mammals die every year as a result of plastic pollution. This includes whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals and sea lions. - WWF Australia

This isn’t to say that all plastic is bad. We need it in our medical apparatus, machinery, or in our home appliances. But the rate at which we’re producing and discarding single use plastics far far outweighs the rate at which we can manage, recycle or repurpose it.

Plastic is also made from fossil fuels. It’s estimated that around 8% of the world’s total oil production goes into making plastics - Vox. As we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels for energy, BP expects plastics to represent 95 percent of the net growth in demand for oil from 2020 to 2040. Reducing the plastic stream would be a win for the climate.

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