Environmentalist Sabina Stefanovic is doing eco-friendly living the right way with Hero Market.
Having a zero-waste lifestyle often seems to be reserved for zen yoga instructors or off-grid non-conformists. It’s difficult to find shops that are cheap and don’t flog unnecessary plastic your way. So the gold star of sustainability – zero-waste – is rarely attained, especially by normal people: families, nurses, teachers, cleaners. It’s just not accessible.
This is where Sabina Stefanovic comes in. Standing in her store-cupboard sized shop in South Harrow market, she is doing zero-waste properly. No frills or overpriced lentils, but the good organic stuff. Rows upon glistening rows of grains, pulses and snacks line the shelves, like a candy store for hippies. She even has washing-up liquid, shampoo and conditioner sat outside the sliding glass doors. Hero Market is not some trendy greenwashed store like many in East London, but a real eco-hub for plastic-free living.
Sabina moved to the UK from Lithuania when she was 21 because her boyfriend was attending university here. She wasn’t ever planning on leaving her home country, especially as “Lithuania is a very clean country; we buy less ready meals and takeaways, so we have less waste from packaging”. They even have some recycling measures that we could learn from in the UK: “two years ago or so they introduced a cash back for plastic bottles, around 10p, which makes everyone recycle even more.”
After working for two years in a supermarket, she decided to set up Hero Market. She says the shop was “realistically all [she] could do to protect the environment, animals and people”. And so she opened the store in Harrow in December 2019 and has since cultivated an audience on her Instagram account.
But it’s not hashtags and vegan chocolates. When asked what the most difficult part is, she says “finding the money for it”; she still works at the supermarket 38 hours a week just to fund her passion project. And anyone who has been to South Harrow Market knows it’s not the most welcoming of places; a poorly lit brick maze with people lingering around. But luckily Sabina says she hasn’t seen any dodgy people there. “Maybe it’s because I am very brave” she stays – “or naïve.” One thing she isn’t though, is pessimistic. She says it’s okay to have a small number of customers as her days aren’t too busy and she hasn’t had to fill in the tax return, yet.
The concept of the store is to take old containers such as empty jam jars and stock up on any essentials. Sabina will then weigh the product and charge according to the weight. A common misconception is that zero-waste stores are more expensive than supermarkets. This belief is not helped by spreading the idea that only wealthy people can live a zero-waste lifestyle.
A recent headline by the Daily Telegraph reads “shopping ethically adds almost £500 to annual shopping bill, research finds”. The research, done by the renewable energy supplier Pure Planet, actually concludes that we need “to work towards an environmentally responsible economy that cuts waste and pollution”. But some readers will just glimpse at the headline and decide it’s not for them. After all, who wants to spend an extra £500 a year on quinoa and organic flour?
You’d be surprised about how much you can get for your money, especially when shopping at Hero Market, compared to trendier more commercial zero-waste stores such as Planet Organic. This brand actually now works with the first zero-waste store in London – Unpackaged – which began as a market stall in 2006. But the step seems to have made prices higher, something that companies can do when their primary consumers are middle-class intellectuals in Bloomsbury.
But plastic-free living is not a new – and certainly not a middle-class – concept. Before the invention of plastic in 1907, people weren’t as obsessed with cleanliness and convenience as we have come to be. According to How Stuff Works, we used clay and glass for storage. And of course, our trusty canvas bags would have been the norm, not an empty fashion statement saying we’re “doing our bit” for the planet.
So Sabina’s Hero Market does things the old fashioned way. With organic ingredients and zero-plastic. As sustainability goes further into the mainstream, Sabina has big plans for the future: “I am looking to expand when I get more income. The ultimate plan is to spread all over the world”. There is certainly an appetite for this, with a cross-generational study by Southern Cross University finding that 77% of Americans and Australians want to live more sustainably.
This is becoming easier, with over 500 zero-waste shops internationally, and even some established supermarkets such as Waitrose trialling plastic-free buying. The hope is that soon, it will be so convenient that we won’t have to even think about it. And with small businesses such as Hero Market leading the way, we are shown that eco-friendly living can be accessible. Sabina Stefanovic is making sure of that.
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