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THE MARKET ISSUE

THE NEARBEES PROJECTWANTS TO MAKE IT EASIER TO SELL HONEY –MUCH EASIER. BUT HOW?

There’s nothing to it, actually: the apiarists at Nearbees bring part-time beekeepers and nearby honey enthusiasts together on their Internet marketplace, allowing natural – and delicious – batches of honey to be sold at a fair price, with transparent information about their provenance, and without long transportation routes. The result? Lively macro-biological neighbourhoods. With bees responsible for fertilising 80% of crop plants, their absence would lead to the disappearance of much of the fruit and vegetable harvest. Following a successful crowdfunding campaign, in 2015 the young team around founder (and beekeeper) Viktoria Schmidt was awarded the Ben&Jerry’s Join Our Core prize and, a year previously, was selected as ”socially-minded start-up of the year“ by German economics and business weekly, Wirtschaftswoche. Now all we need to do is hope the idea catches on everywhere and leads to similar platforms in other countries: that’d be really sweet.

The idea couldn’t be more simple – which is why it’s great. The German Environment Agency calculates that there are currently up to 140 million tons of rubbish floating around in the world’s oceans. Each year, another 10 million tons is added, with Germany alone producing around 17 million tons of packaging waste annually. Each and every hour, 320,000 coffee cups are thrown away in Europe’s largest economy. The good news, though, is that there are now zerowaste options. Zero-waste stores use smart forms of food packaging such as reusable organic cotton nets for fruit and vegetables, bags made of biological linen and beeswax sheets; then there’s make-your-own cleaner mixes, toothpaste in tablet form, aluminium-free tea-lights, plintfibre cutlery, and products such as tea, coffee, nuts and spices in jars. Milena Glimbowski owns a zerowaste shop in Berlin and is a pioneer of the movement, even if she also knows exactly where its limitations are: “One big mistake was to assume that our shop would not produce any rubbish at all, and our

idea of getting suppliers to use and reuse containers by putting deposits on them didn’t work quite the way we’d hoped. Lots of people liked the idea, but only a few were able to implement it. Then again, the journey is, in many ways, the destination. Consumers can buy products such as rice, nuts and muesli without plastic packaging from 25kg bags made of recycled paper. “Big packs of sweets and spices are slightly smaller, and mainly made of paper, too, even if a few still are unfortunately using plastic.” Glimbowski says that it was frustrating to see how even the best laid plans still left her with rubbish, but that the amount of refuse is in no way comparable with what is produced by standard businesses. “So we still have some rubbish, but a lot less – and, above all, far less plastic.” This business model is one of the few instances of more of one thing leading to less of something else: the more people who join the zerowaste movement worldwide, the less rubbish there will be on planet earth.

If you happen to be on a train passing through Todmorden in West Yorkshire and start feeling a bit peckish, just get off: before you’ve even left the station in this quintessentially English town, you’ll find vegetable patches packed with juicy carrots and straddled by tomato plants or berry bushes. Who’s behind it? Local volunteers who like their food – and even get the odd bit of funding from the town council. Are you allowed to eat any of it? A sign gives you permission to take what you want. Todmorden, Bristol, Seattle, Andernach, Darmstadt, Kassel, Jena, Vienna, Zurich. . . The list of places which are trading in ivy, begonias and pansies in public parks, gardens, and flower beds for edible crops is getting longer and more international by the day; the first studies documenting the benefits for communities are appearing, too. Urban gardens are places where people meet and exercise both their creativity and their muscles as they work; for children, they are basically outdoor biology lessons. What’s more, the plants produce fruit and vegetables which are both organic and affordable – i.e. they’re free. And overall, edible towns are measurably more sustainable.