Down to zero: How this Ottawa entrepreneur plans to change the way you buy food

For most people, garbage day is hardly something to ponder, beyond remembering it's time to put out the trash.

ForValrie Leloup, though, the day isa starkreminder of just how muchstuff we could avoid throwing out if only we made the effort.

"I just can't believe how much garbage some people put out, bags andbags of it," the Kanata resident said.

Leloup might well be one of those people today if not for alife-altering book her mother handed her two years ago.

Book changed everything

It was Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, the "simple living"guru the New York Times calls the "Priestess of Zero-Waste Living." The book is a guide to eliminating or at least shrinkingthe mountains of garbage we churn out of our homes.

Reduce that garbage and you alsoreducethegreenhouse gases emitted by both rotting dump sites and the production of packaging.

TheLisgarCollegiate French teacher loved the book's message and no sooner did she finish it than she started practising what it preached. She said she is now down to one small bag of garbage every two weeks.

But with two teenage daughters at home,she soon realized it wasn't going to be easy to eliminate one of hermajor sources of garbage: food packaging. Grocery stores are filled with food products that are packaged, often in plastic or other materials, that aren't reusable or compostable.

That's when an (energy-efficient) light bulb went off in Leloup'shead: agrocery store that would provide one-stop shopping andzero-waste.

"I started imagining a store where everything was there. Doing a little bit of research I realized that these stores already exist. They've been opening up in Europe in the last two to three years. This research turned into a business plan, and the business plan into a quest for money and one thing after the other led to me wanting to open this store."

Not your typical bulk store

Thestore is Nu Groceryand it marks a big life change forLeloup.The French-born 45-year-old wasan executive with food giantDanonefor several years in Germany and then in Montreal.But after arriving in Ottawa in 2003, she became a high school French teacher. She has never operated a store.

The store will offer about 350 products and the idea is to produce zero waste.-ValrieLeloup

Leloup said the store will stock all sorts of food,from fresh produce, dry goods in bins, and cheese to prepared meals and milk. Only fish and meat will be missing. There will also be cosmetics and cleaning products. In all, the store will offerabout 350products and the idea is to produce zero waste.

BYOC(Bring your own container)

There will be no plastic bags, wrap or containers available in the store. But shoppers will be offered either compostable paper bags or reusable glass bottles and jars, for which they will have to pay a deposit, orthey canbring their own containers with the weight deducted from the price of whatever they buy.

"My biggest challenge for this store is to find those things you cannot find in bulk. And if you look at the really hard core zero-wasters, there are a lot of products that they do themselves, typically something like hummus,pesto, even deodorant, toothpaste products that are typically sold in single-use plastic packaging. So I'm trying to find solutions for that."

"So for example, we're going to partner with a great local business that does hummus. They're going to produce a big batch for us and we're going toserve it to our customers in their containers. We'll have something that is delicious, local and ready-to-use and also zero-waste.

Summer opening planned

Lelouphas a location for Nu Grocery,but she's not revealing it until she finalizes the lease. All she will say is it's central and she loves the spot. Thanks to family, friends and the bank, she has the financing lined up, along with about two-thirds of her suppliers. She plans to open the grocery store by the summer.

For her, it's not just the opening of a business, it's the start of a local movement.

"The last thing I want is for this to stay a niche. Right now, zero-waste is a niche, it's even a micro-niche if you ask me, so I want to move this into the mainstream."