in.gredients Plans Nation's First No-Waste Grocery Store

Urban Patchwork Farm Plot (courtesy of in.gredients)

Every day, packaging makes up more than one-third of the 700,000 tons of garbage placed in American landfills. This summer, an Austin grocery store aims to rethink the packaging part of the equation. in.gredients will open on the corner of Manor Road and Walnut Avenue in East Austin as the first package-free and zero waste grocery store in the United States.

While most of us are familiar with the slogan “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle,” in.gredients founders the Lane brothers (Joseph, Christian and Patrick), Chris Pepe and Brian Nunnery, felt that precycling was the way to go. Precycling is the practice avoiding items that will generate waste in the first place, and it is much more energy efficient than recycling.

Read the rest of the article in the Austin Post.

Returning the Farmers Market – El Mercado – to the Hispanic Community

Fresh vegetables at Mercado Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Mexico

Growing up in Los Angeles in the 1980s, my memory of grocery shopping with my mother was going to the Vons in South El Monte. It was sort of like Texas’ version of H-E-B, except with a more distinct Hispanic flair (in 1984, William Davila became the first Mexican American CEO of an American supermarket chain). Since then, that supermarket has been replaced by Superior Grocers, or “La Superior” as we call it in my old ‘hood.

But my first experience going to a farmers market wasn’t until the late 1980s, when I went on an 8th grade school field trip to Exposition Park to visit the great museums of Southern California. For lunch, they took us to the “original” Farmers Market in downtown Los Angeles, on 3rd and Fairfax, in operation since the mid-1930s.

Read the rest of the article in Latinometro.