The supermarket industry is undergoing massive changes. Online grocery shopping and traditional methods of buying are going head to head. Add to this an increased awareness of how food arrives at our tables where, increasingly, issues of food origin, waste and sustainable practices are driving purchasing decisions.

One response to these changes is the package-free supermarket, an idea being rebooted around the world, primarily in hipster bastions like Portland, Berlin, Austin and Amsterdam. For years, health-food stores and bulk-food retailers like Bin Inn have catered to a small-but-dedicated consumer base. New players like Original Unverpackt in Berlin and in.gredients in Austin, Texas are bringing a design approach to the industry.

Yet it is more than just about how consumers take their precious groceries home; it attempts to eradicate disposable packaging (cardboard, plastic or anything else) at every stage of the supply chain.

Milena Glimbovski and Sara Wolf from Original Unverpackt raised €100,000 (NZ$147 thousand) starting capital via crowd-unding website Kickstarter in one day. Their first store in Kreuzberg, Berlin, has a utilitarian layout with ordered rows of white shelves and an industrial aesthetic. The duo’s plans for their next venture include a stronger visual identity with sleek custom food dispensers, timber crates and industrial light fittings. Meanwhile in Austin, the liberal enclave in the middle of Texas, in.gredients claims to be the first package-free supermarket in a country that throws away 260 million kilograms of packaging each day. Founder Christian Lane is quick to point out the main challenge to going package-free: “Let’s face it, branding and marketing work. How a product is packaged definitely helps sell the product, particularly if it is something new or unfamiliar to the customer.”

Last year, a quarter of the $550 billion spent on global advertising was spent on what the industry delightfully calls Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) – what we call food and beverage. Package-free stores are barely a ripple in a massive market yet point to a future where a designed approach embraces physical store design, an ethical understanding of food and an engaged community both online and off.

If it catches on, perhaps we’ll return to the point before the advent of the supermarket where package-free shopping was just called shopping.