With the current climate crisis and the knowledge we have about the impact of what we consume on our planet, more and more people are trying to adopt a zero waste or low waste lifestyle. The principle is simple: you adapt your way of consuming so that you don’t have to throw away anything anymore, or at least as little as possible. Simple on paper, yet in real life, it’s quite the challenge. Most of the product we buy are packaged and avoiding them costs a lot of time and energy.
And even then, even when you try your best, even when you take your own containers to the supermarket and turn your old clothes into rags to clean the house, you’ll still be left with some trash. Maybe it’s a packet of a medicine you had to take, maybe it’s simply a price tag, maybe it’s something else but honestly, no waste at all is almost certainly impossible, even for those who adopted the lifestyle a long time ago. And you know what? That’s fine. The fact that you’re trying your best and making as little waste as possible is already more than what most people will ever achieve.
Yet there’s one domain where zero waste is actually not that hard to achieve: food. Most fruits and vegetables can be found in bulk and the same goes for everything else, really. Of course, the most sustainable thing to do is producing as much as you can yourself but let’s be honest, some things are just too difficult to grow at home. And then there’s still the issue of going to a restaurant. Which is very nice and fun, we know, but most restaurants don’t have the same zero waste policy as you might have and therefore, a lot gets thrown away.
Nolla
Yet that’s certainly not the case for the new Finnish restaurant Nolla in Helsinki. All the food comes from local producers, the micro-brewery on the premises used any leftover yeast, everything is made from recycled materials and with every dish comes a carbon footprint. “All our scraps are composted and returned to the farmers we buy from as fertilizer. It’s a mindset. We research everything, including using wind-powered electricity”, co-owner Luka tells Metro UK. And if you thought all of that would result in a decrepit-looking restaurant serving mushy meals, think again. And because pictures say more than a thousand words, scroll down for some mouthwatering photos.
