If you’ve ever been annoyed with package, you probably love the idea of a package-free grocery store. And zero waste at the supermarket isn’t such a crazy dream; a new store in Germany is promising exactly that.

The Original Unverpackt in Berlin is a project of Sara Wolf and Miena Glimbovski. They crowdfunded the project, and the idea proved so popular that they are more than doubly funded.

The store will sell food locally to reduce transportation costs and energy use. There are containers that can be reused, or better yet, you can bring your own. It’ll also carry non-food things like cleaning products and personal care items.

The German project isn’t the only grocery store fighting wasteful packaging. In.gredients, in Austin, Texas is the first zero-waste store. It offers things that are filled in customers’ own containers and it offers reusable containers too.

Of course, plenty of stores have been doing some version (版本) of reduced packaging for years. The First Alternative Natural Foods Co-Op in Corvallis, Oregon, where I do most of my shopping, offers all dry goods including baking goods and dried fruit and beans in bulk (散装), and plenty of others too, including tofu, cheese, eggs, honey, and butter oils, soaps and pet foods too. I bring my own containers, and a couple of produce (农产品) bags for small items. I’m probably using half or less than half of the packaging I used to shop at a Whole Foods in Connecticut before I moved.

So even if you don’t have a zero-waste grocery in your town, you can still cut down on the packaging you use by planning ahead, and patronizing those businesses that offer bulk-food buying. Farmers markets are great in this way too — you can give the farmer any packaging right back for reuse.

During a waste collection session in May at the base of Mount Qomolangma, in the Tibet Autonomous Region, participants put garbage（mostly plastics）into bags and prepared to transport them downhill.

Dressed in camouflage and a blue vest, Samdrub dragged a sack to a blue truck parked a few hundred meters away. Scores of similar sacks were piled up along the roadside, waiting to be loaded onto the vehicle. Not far away, a couple of sheep roamed the deserted land looking for grass. “Loads of it here. Loads of it. This is the fifth consecutive time we have come here and we still haven’t finished the clean-up, ” said Samdrub, 64, who, like many Tibetans only uses one name. Samdrub and her companions are members of a regular clean-up campaign organized by the Lhasa Ban-White Association, an environmental advocacy group that taps the volunteer spirit to control abandoned plastic trash, also known as “white pollution”. The volunteers are of all ages and come from different walks of life. Now retired and with time to kill, Samdrub and her friends have taken to the city’s ravines and riverbanks to battle the pollution. “In recent years, I’ve read reports that livestock choked and died after eating plastic. I was born and raised in rural Shigatse, and I know how big a financial loss that is for herders. ” Samdrub said.

Tersing Dorji, 62, a member of the Lhasa Ban-White Association, said the worst pollution results from rural farmers’ markets and the common use of plastic bags, which are super-thin and relatively expensive to recycle. “They are of various colors and very light, and when the wind blows they fly everywhere. ” she said.

A rule was then implemented by authorities in Lhasa that banned the production of super-thin plastics and ordered retailers to charge customers a fee if they wanted a regular plastic bag. The ban was later extended to the entire region. It has worked well generally, especially in supermarkets and other large operations, where additional charges for plastic bags have prompted many shoppers to opt for reusable items, such as cloth bags.

Berlin-based Green City Solutions believes its moss (苔藓) walls, called CityTrees, which are about 4 m2 in size, can filter (过滤) up to 80% of pollution particles (微粒) out of the air, including the tiny ones linked to lung diseases.

The walls collect rainwater, which is pumped through a watering system to the plants using solar energy. These also drive fans to increase airflow through the plants. As a result, the company says its product filters 3,500 m3 of air an hour, which is equal to the total amount of air breathed by 7,000 people in that time.

Alison Haynes at the University of Wollongong and her colleagues recently looked at how effectively moss and trees reduced pollution. They found that moss was up to four times better at trapping particles than the native Australian tree.

But this doesn’t mean moss walls will necessarily protect people from pollution at busy bus stops, says Zoran Ristovski at the Queensland University of Technology. In a small room, a moss wall only needs to filter a relatively small amount of new air each hour, but tens or hundreds of times this amount of air is pushed past by buses, he says. Therefore, a moss wall in a street is unlikely to make any difference.

Different solutions will be needed, says Ruby Michael at Griffith University. Where streets are crowded with tall buildings on both sides, she says, tree planting can backfire (适得其反) because trees can reduce airflow and therefore moss walls may be a better option.

Cities are unlikely to rush to replace their trees just yet. “It’s important to remember that street trees provide a whole host of other benefits, including habitat for urban wildlife, shelter from the sun for people on the street, and reduction of urban heat islands,” says Michael.