Earth.Food.Love is a packaging-free grocery shop nestled in a Devonshire market town run by a couple on a mission to keep plastic off our plates.
Richard Eckersley is better known for his colourful football career which took him to Old Trafford as a very young player and also involved stints at Burnley FC and Oldham Athletic, as well as going across the Atlantic playing for Toronto FC and New York Red Bulls.
These days he can be found working alongside his wife Nicola in the zero waste store in Totnes which sells a range of strictly organic-only products.
This includes more than 100 organic, loose and self-serve products such as cereals, pulses, legumes, beans, grains, nuts, seeds, dried fruits, dried herbs, dried spices, loose-leaf teas, flour and sugar. There is also a variety of liquid goods like oils, vinegar and syrups, plus other products to help customers live a zero-waste lifestyle.
But instead of rifling through the usual cardboard, paper and plastic packaging of conventional food, customers bring in their own containers and use the store’s self-weighing system.
There is not a single packaged food in sight.
Empty and reusable containers are filled with the desired products and paper bags made from sustainable wood pulp, which are fully compostable with food waste, are also on hand.
One of the store’s most popular products is the ‘grind-your-own’ nut butter machines which are filled with almonds and peanuts.
Talking about the store’s organic policy, the website says: “We believe organic farming is the natural way and ‘organic food’ should in fact just be called ‘food’, allowing the pesticide-laden stuff to take the burden of an adjective.
“So rest assured that everything sold in this shop is as nature intended, organic.”
