LOVE YOUR MARKET
“The market and many of its traders are trailblazers for the way we should shop now”
to provide people with the opportunity to support ‘slow fashion’ and allow them to make a conscious choice to buy clothes sustainably.” This approach is echoed by another clothing stall on the other side of the market, Momme & Mig, which displays a rainbow of crisp dresses in summer and cosy coats in winter. Charlotte Gregersen buys from all over the world, always seeking top-quality vintage clothing. “My whole idea is that my clothes look like new clothes” she explains. “It opens people’s minds when they look at the garments here. I am lucky as we have a lot of ‘thinking’ women in Cambridge, who care about the lasting quality of things. I buy clothes from the era where women wouldn’t just wear things once.” Charlotte also wraps the clothes she sells in paper and ties them with string to be carried home – so much nicer than a plastic bag. The market has always had its fair share of stalls offering high-quality, used goods: great record stores (like North South Records and Matrix Vinyl) and book stalls (such as Paul Neeve’s Market Bookstore and Buckles Books), have all served the public for many years, with a good sprinkling of advice and chat to add value to your pre-loved purchase. The new stall owners seem to be carrying on this tradition with Bookish, co-owned by Kate Kemp, offering a small range of carefully curated books and framed pictures. “All the books are ones we have read or want to read. The pictures are created from original book covers – the Tin Tin ones are recycled from water-damaged books,” she explains. Everything on the stall is second-hand, but hand-picked, which again seems like an approach from a bygone era, where we valued and reused things more, yet one that chimes with modern ‘green’ values, too. I am already feeling impressed and enthused by the old-meets-new approach to eco-friendly shopping, when I stumble across a small stall called Full Circle, run by ecologist Emma Thomas. She has been on the market since December, offering a range of goods specifically for the environmentally concerned shopper. “We really wanted a place in the heart of the
community as our business is very community-focused, helping people to help the planet, so the market is the ideal place for us,” she says. She talks me through their product range, which focuses on helping the consumer to “break up with plastic and stop using single-use items”. There is a Zero Waste range of shampoos, deodorants and soaps (plus dog shampoo) made by a local company, natural toothpaste, coffee cups that are ‘poetically’ made from recycled single-use coffee cups, plus a range of refillable products, including hand soap and laundry soap. Full Circle is also crowdfunding to expand the business to include a no-packaging grocery range, where you can obtain olive oil, pulses, stock and more in refillable containers. Emma’s passion and commitment is truly inspiring, and there is a queue of curious and interested shoppers as I leave her. By now it’s lunchtime, and I wander over for a chat with Neil Mackay from The Mac Daddy and buy some of his delicious mac ‘n’ cheese. I tell him I’m feeling enthused about the planet-friendly shopping opportunities within the market, and he has more good news for me. “Where possible, market traders do trade with each other, too”, he says. “I buy cheese from The Cheese Stall for example, and the majority of food traders use compostable packaging.” Neil is also the only hot food trader that trades from a cargo bike, and is also part of the carbon-free-dining scheme, which plants trees to offset CO₂ usage. It strikes me that, despite its long history, the market and many of its traders are trailblazers for the way we should shop now, and must shop in the future. As small, independent businesses, they are able to adapt and offer an approach that the larger shops seem slow to adopt. They offer the perfect combination of the best old ways (paper bags and the personal touch) combined with the new (a real commitment to helping us change the impact that our shopping has). I, for one, am feeling inspired to shop regularly at the market not just this month, but every month – and I hope you are, too. l
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