Meet the mindful shopper: a new guide to shopping circular businesses.

Shopping for what you actually need can be a challenge, especially in a self-indulgent society. With endless short-lived trends, constant shiny new products and an abundance of advertisements that convince you you ‘absolutely must’ buy the latest things, it can feel somewhat overwhelming. This is where adopting a mindful attitude to shopping can be useful. But who can you trust in a sea of brands who claim they are ‘sustainable’. And how do you go about finding circular brands that encapsulate similar philosophies to ours: to buy once, and buy well?

Meet The Mindful Shopper: a new online guide to help Londoners (and beyond) to shop more mindfully whilst reducing waste. And we’re absolutely thrilled to be one of the brands featured in it.

Read on to find out more about who they are, what they do and how they can help us to purchase more mindfully.

Who they are

The Mindful Shopper is a guide to help people make planet-friendly decisions about what they buy, who they buy it from and whether they actually need to buy it at all. Through helpful guides on how to waste less and reuse, repair, share and recycle more, this exciting new destination showcases brands, like ours, that can help us all do that.

This guide was created by ReLondon, a partnership of the Mayor of London and all London boroughs to reduce waste and help transform the city into a leading, low-carbon circular economy.

With the average volume of household waste collected by local authorities in England in 2020 amounting to 399 kilograms per person, The Mindful Shopper aims to help us shop mindfully and adopt some simple sharing, repairing and recycling habits to reduce our impact on the planet by saving water, reducing carbon emissions and waste, as well as cutting down on the number of new resources extracted from the earth.

Here’s what our founder Tara had to say:

‘Buy Me Once exists to champion quality and longevity over throwaway, poorly made products helping people to save money over time and the planet by dramatically reducing waste. To be recognised for our work amongst some other truly great brands by The Mindful Shopper is incredible.'

How it works:

With nearly 30 circular businesses covering clothing, products for kids and babies, homewares, personal care items, food and drink plus a great gift selection; The Mindful Shopper connects shoppers to innovative products and services that help to reduce waste as part of living a more eco-friendly lifestyle. You will also find helpful guides on how to waste less and reuse, repair, share and recycle more.

In one handy online destination, each of the various brands, products, platforms and services featured help reduce waste and support Londoners to live more sustainably in at least one of these ways:

Rent or borrow - Brands that let you rent, lease, borrow or share things rather than buying them.

Buy once - Products that are made to last or can be re-used and repaired.

Second life - Brands that make it easy for products to be taken back when you're finished with them or provide a platform for others to sell these items second-hand.

Less packaging - Products with no packaging, or that come in reusable or refillable packaging.

Recycled - Products made from recycled materials or items that would otherwise have been wasted.

More than a guide…

However, this guide isn’t solely all about shopping - it’ll also help you to live more sustainably by:

Providing guides on how to waste less and reuse, repair, share and recycle more

Suggesting times when you might not need to shop at all

Supporting a community of like-minded people who want to reduce their waste.

After working for years with small businesses with innovative approaches to reducing waste, The Mindful Shopper was born out of ReLondon’s passion to share much-needed planet-saving solutions with a wider audience.

On creating The Mindful Shopper, Andrea Charlson at ReLondon said:

“There are so many amazing solutions out there that can help us live a more sustainable lifestyle, but it can be time-consuming to find them and hard to know who to trust. We want to make it easier for us all to make small changes by sharing products and services that we believe are a step in the right direction.

We’re hugely excited to be launching this website, and we hope that it will grow over the next few years to become a vital resource for London and beyond – helping all of us waste less and reuse, repair, share and recycle more.”

Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Shirley Rodrigues, said:

“Tackling the climate emergency will create new jobs and can be done in a way that helps businesses to cut costs. Through his Green New Deal fund the Mayor is supporting the growth of small businesses who aim to reduce waste and use resources more efficiently. We welcome this initiative by ReLondon to help Londoners shop more sustainably.”

Whether you’re a shopper wanting to make more mindful choices or a sustainable business that shares ReLondon’s vision, find out more at The Mindful Shopper website.