Summary
Packaging-free. Local. Organic.
OHNE is a shop concept based on three pillars: low waste, short chain and organic; in that order. OHNE focuses on daily consumer goods, because they want people to be able to do their entire shopping in one shop. You will find dry goods, fruit and vegetables, dairy, a fresh counter but also cosmetics and other necessities. They work with local farmers to offer as many local, fresh and organic products as possible. By producing and consuming goods locally, you save a lot of transport kilometres and you eliminate the need for a whole packaging cycle.
The concept aims to effortlessly persuade consumers to change their purchasing habits to a more environmentally conscious one. Customers can bring their own reusable jars or bags to the shop and fill them to their heart's content. Their box or jar is weighed on a scale, and then the customer can put in what he likes.
OHNE's mission is to make packaging-free, local and organic alternatives accessible to everyone. They are committed to reducing waste and conserving resources by demonstrating that packaging is often simply unnecessary. They offer an alternative to recycling, namely avoiding waste and reusing packaging.
OHNE selects and evaluates suppliers and partners on the basis of their products, the packaging they use and their efforts to reduce their ecological footprint by using local, organic, unpackaged and/or recycled products.
OHNE Coop is a cooperative model. The independent shopkeepers are shareholders in the Coop and help to determine the direction in which they should go. Shop owners enjoy the group's success and help to raise awareness of the need to opt for zero waste.
Strategies
Refuse
Refuse unnecessary packaging
Reduce
Reduce (food) waste by only buying the quantity you need
Re-use
Re-usable biodegradable products & packaging
Cross-border
Sophie, one of the founders of OHNE, had been thinking about starting her own sustainability business for some time. When she travelled in the USA, she saw gigantic supermarkets where you can buy many products in bulk. Pasta, rice and other dry goods can easily be bought there without packaging. So you don't have to go to a special organic or packaging-free shop to shop sustainably. She thought it would be interesting to do something in Belgium with the packaging-free/ bulk concept. By talking about her idea, she found a group of people who wanted to set up OHNE together. They went to talk to the packaging-free shops that already existed in Belgium at the time and in 2015 became the manager of the first OHNE shop in Ghent. Five years later, they were a cooperative with six shops in Flanders.
Social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ohnegent
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ohne-coop/
See more?
Do you want to know more about this organization? Please visit their website: https://ohne.be/
