A supermarket in the Netherlands is trying to help cut down on the world's plastic consumption.
Dutch grocery store chain Ekoplaza opened the world's first plastic-free supermarket aisle on Wednesday. The aisle is located in one of its Amsterdam stores and has almost 700 items that are all plastic-free. Instead, groceries are packed in material like cardboard, metal or glass. Ekoplaza says it hopes to add a plastic-free aisle to all of its 74 stores.
Europe has been making a push to cut back on plastic. Earlier this year, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May said she wants to eliminate avoidable plastic waste in the country by 2042. The European Commission also said it wanted to make all plastic packaging recyclable by 2030.
It may be a small step in the grand scheme of plastic consumption. The journal Science Advances estimates humans have made more than 9 billion tons of plastic since the 1950s. If the trend continues, the world will have created 13 billion tons of plastic waste by 2050, which is about 35,000 times as heavy as the Empire State Building.
