Recycling is nice, but some shop owners are trying to eliminate waste altogether.

An article By AIMEE LEE BALL

Still life by Jess Bonham. Styled by Gemma Tickle

THE SHOPPERS AT Original Unverpackt, a food market in the gentrifying but still gritty Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, arrive largely by bicycle, carrying mesh totes and burlap sacks. Along one impeccably organized wall, they lift the spouts of gravity bins to let grains, nuts or legumes tumble into the tins and jars they’ve brought along. At the bulbous stainless steel fusti, they dispense olive oil, balsamic vinegar or soy sauce into glass vessels. A customer samples a Medjool date, but looks confused about what to do with the pit — there are no napkins, no trash cans — and ends up stashing it in her pocket. She is, after all, shopping at a store committed to zero waste.

Designed by the Los Angles-based architect Michael J. Brown, a disciple of Daniel Libeskind, the shop is a particularly sleek and modern manifestation of precycling, the concept of eliminating trash before it is created. If you don’t use new plastic, paper or metal to begin with, you won’t have to dispose of it.

At Lunzers in Vienna, even humble goods are carefully presented. Credit Markus Krottendorfer

It’s been 20 years since the Environmental Protection Agency began a media campaign to introduce precycling, but it’s yet to catch on in any substantial way with Americans. Now, a new breed of mostly European store owners, who are as aesthetically sophisticated as they are ethically minded, are trying to change how we shop by presenting the market as a curated space. In an age in which we simultaneously expect and are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of choice at the grocery — this brand of whole-grain pasta or that one? — these stores offer something defiantly old-fashioned: one or two alternatives, selected by a member of a righteous cognoscenti. ‘‘There’s one kind of rice in my store,’’ said Andrea Lunzer of her eponymous Viennese shop. ‘‘I don’t have rices fighting with each other. I’ve chosen for you — that’s why it’s called Lunzers.’’

Lunzer hired a carpenter to create a black-and-white store worthy of Cecil Beaton’s Ascot Gavotte, with dark woods, glossy walls and marble and stone surfaces, and a young industrial designer, Kathrina Dankl, to help design the customer experience. ‘‘We needed an elegance that’s welcoming, as you realize this is the new way you’re supposed to shop if you care about the environment,’’ Dankl says. ‘‘The mission was taking something that our grandmas knew very well — a personal relationship with a shop — but making it contemporary, a place where you pamper yourself but make conscious choices.’’

When Judit Vidal and Iban Àlvaro opened the first of their 12 Granel (Spanish for ‘‘bulk’’) stores in Spain, their backgrounds in scenic design (her) and architecture (him) helped reinvent the look of bulk shopping. The bins of caramels and quinoa and arrangements of olives and honey are at eye level, essentially advertising themselves, their actual shapes and colors replacing photos on packages. Stepladders let young customers participate, while the grown-ups reacquaint themselves with weights and measures to buy exactly what they need from pale wood coffers under powder-coated industrial lamps.

Bins of pasta at an Effecorta in Italy. Credit Guido Mencari

Then there’s Gérard Bellet, who created a company specifically to precycle liquid goods. Jean Bouteille — which is available at certain organic groceries in France and Belgium — allows shoppers to decant vinegars, wines and detergents from gleaming steel tubes into reusable bottles with silk-screened labels designed by a typographer in Lille: Customers pay a small deposit for the bottles; when they’re returned, they’re cleaned and recirculated. ‘‘You cannot kill the bottle,’’ said Bellet, who hopes to offer a precyclable way to buy soda and beer as well. ‘‘The only way is if it breaks.’’

PRECYCLING OFFERS a secondary reward as well, by making us re-see what we’re looking at. Most packaging hides the good stuff, but there’s no hiding the gorgeous greens and golds of the olive oil varietals poured from big blown-glass teardrops at the French bulk shops Day by Day. There is nothing hippieish about any of their nine markets: Some resemble Candyland, all primary colors under dancing glass mobiles; others are almost monastically white.

This more thoughtful way of shopping does require some adjustment. Original Unverpackt owners Milena Glimbovski and Sara Wolf must occasionally explain that the canister of white pellets contains chewable toothpaste — no carton, no tube — or that the ‘‘mooncups,’’ which already have a passionate fan base, are tampon alternatives made of medical-grade silicon. But they, like proprietors of similar stores, say that the size, shape and consistency of virtually any product could be altered to fit the zero-waste model. At Italy’s Effecorta locations (which means ‘‘short chain’’: a jibe at big supermarkets), shoppers use disposable plastic gloves to grab fistfuls of spaghetti from glass-domed containers, or scoop smaller shapes with ladles.

Rethinking and reinventing groceries in the interest of the environment would require the cooperation of manufacturers, as well as consumers. Americans are like the Felix Unger of the retail economy, with a reputation for fastidiousness — that’s why so many products are packaged and shrink-wrapped in layers of protection: Nobody’s touched those coffee beans since Juan Valdez grew them. But we weren’t always so persnickety; we used to buy pickles or crackers or penny nails from bins. Big Grocery, like Big Pharma, might argue that packaging provides 21st-century security, and that precycling on a grand scale is impractical. Not true, say these European shopkeepers: Their places are updating the old American general store cracker-barrel approach, while making hygiene a priority.

So is America ready? Denver is about to find out when it gets Zero Market, co-founded by Lyndsey Manderson, a former high-school science teacher, whose new store will be located inside an old aviation hangar and will resemble a modern apothecary. The walls will be covered with reclaimed barn wood that’s been sanded and waxed. Rolling ladders to access higher shelves will make shopping a bit of a joyride rather than drudgery. Amber- and clear-glass jars will be painted with chalkboard labels so the contents are both evident and inviting. ‘‘We’re asking people to slow down when they come to the store and take time to figure out how much they need,’’ said Manderson. ‘‘And we’ll have a tracker that will let them see the amount of packaging that’s been diverted from landfill.’’ How long, then, until Brooklyn catches on?