The zero-waste revolution: how a new wave of shops could end excess packaging

Shops that minimise the environmental impact of our consumer habits are springing up across Britain. Could they help us avert catastrophe?The smell in Natural Weigh, a zero-waste shop that opened a year ago in Crickhowell in mid-Wales, is lovely. The shop – filled with pasta, grains, seeds and dried fruit served from hoppers to avoid plastic packaging; washing-up liquid and laundry products that customers pump into their battered old squeezy bottles; fair-trade coffee and chocolate, plus a