 Hello, amigos and amigas. It's your good friend, Ryan Van Duzer, and today we're going grocery biking. As many of you know, I've never had a car. I ride my bike everywhere, sometimes on giant adventures around the world, but most days right around here in Boulder, Colorado. And one of the biggest questions I get being car free is how do you go on simple errands? And one of those errands is grocery shopping. The typical mindset is that you need a car to go grocery shopping to fill it up with all the goodies. And that's not always true. You can definitely do this on a bike. I've been grocery biking since I moved out of mom's house when I was 30. That's not entirely true. But you can use a cargo bike. You can use a trailer on your bike. Or in my case, I just put on some panniers and go grocery biking. And actually, when you only have a small space on your bike to put groceries in, you don't overbuy. So you just buy the things that you need. And today I am going to my new favorite grocery store here in Boulder, and it's called Nude Foods. And no, you don't have to be naked to go there, and the people working there aren't nude. But what they do do is zero waste grocery shopping. No plastic whatsoever. It is so cool. Okay, here's some quick and very depressing facts about plastic. Americans use about 50 bubba billion plastic bottles a year. Less than one third to one fourth of those bottles are actually recycled. The rest end up in landfills or as litter in the environment. And recycled plastic bottles don't become new plastic bottles. They can only be downcycled into lower quality material. And plastics in the environment never fully decompose. Instead, they break down into smaller and smaller pieces, eventually into microplastics that remain in the environment forever and get eaten by animals and someday make their way into our bodies. That's so much. Inestimated 9 million tons of plastic enter the oceans every year. By 2050, they're saying there might be more plastic in the ocean than fish. If you want to learn more about this, then please Google why does plastic suck? So as I mentioned, Nude Foods is a zero waste grocery store. And what exactly does that mean? Well, there's no plastic to be found. Plastic is the devil. Almost everything they sell comes in reusable glass jars. You come home, you eat your yummy food, and then you bring the empty jars back to the store. They wash them and fill them back up with food. And I just want you to know that I have yet to break one of these glass jars. I just fit 14 jars into these panniers, and there's plenty of room to spare. You might not think that you could fill these up with a lot of food, but you sure can. Okay, time to go. Oh yeah. Oh, and check this out. This is my new old bike helmet. I got a can of gold spray paint and turned this into something out of Star Wars. Hey friends, here we are, Nude! Gentlemen, how you doing, bud? Hello, Duzer Nation. It just so happens that you're here at the same time as me. What a coincidence. What a coincidence. We're like Batman and Robin or something. Exactly. Yeah. So Waylon is the zero-waste master. So I called him to meet me so we can talk to you about living a zero-waste life. He also shops here all the time. I also don't have a car. The key to zero-waste is hating plastic. So let the force of hate consume you toward plastic because plastic is climate change and it's toxic. So zero-waste is just being like our grandmothers were, right? They didn't use plastic all the time. All right, let's do this. Let's do this. So you're going to see how easy this is. In case it's intimidating to leave plastic behind, you bring your jars back. They don't really even have to be clean because they have to sterilize them. You just have to count them like in Sesame Street. One, two. So you just count them. You count them because you get money back, right? And look at this. Here's two of the women founders. It's women-owned largely. Yeah. Nude Foods, local Verity and Rachel. And I idolize them. Namaste. I bow to them. They're amazing. They are amazing. You do your shopping. You do your shopping. I will talk with the wonderful women of Nude Foods. So the way it works is you come in. You shop like a normal store. You can just grab whatever you want off the shelf. And the nice thing is you can see it. You can actually see the food you're buying rather than being blinded by all the marketing on the packaging. And you check out at the end. Or we also have a mobile app that some people use to check out themselves. And you pay a deposit per jar. And when you return your jar, you get part of that deposit back. We keep a small amount for a cleaning fee because obviously, unlike most stores who just get big pallets of stuff wrapped in plastic that they get in, they put on the shelf, we actually have to wash, sanitize, fill. And then the surprisingly most challenging bit is finding the right lid because we also reuse these stickers on top of the lids. These are not one and done. They are washed. And we aim to use the stickers for at least a year. We aim to use the jars for at least seven years. And you'd be surprised actually at how few get broken. So what kind of food do you offer? This place is obviously smaller than a typical grocery store. It is. What are some of the, what do you sell, essentially? Well, one of the reasons it's small actually is because instead of having like five different kinds of rice to choose from, we have one kind of rice. And it's the best rice. So everything goes through very strict taste tests with us, as well as a deep environmental kind of dive to make sure that it really is good for you and good for the environment. And you try to source local as much as possible. We do, actually. You want to follow me? Yes, let's go on an adventure. Come on. Let's go. Now, this was written a while ago. So this is some of our local supplies. You can see how many there are. And now we must have how many more, Rachel? Like at least 50 more, probably. The glass jars are designed to be where people can just, you know, grab and go. Like it's designed to be like a normal grocery store. So there's not a lot of difference between that. But here, if you wanted to bring your own containers, you can, we have this section of refill here. And then at the back here, we also have laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, dish soap that you can come and refill. And, you know, things like this are hugely wasteful. So when people are buying that every few months, that's a massive amount of plastic. So now people can bring this in and refill it. You can get your peanut butter in these giant jars that last a long time. And it's organic and very yummy. What's in your cart, my friend? So this is just so easy. I mean, I shop here in like five minutes. So one of my favorite things, I was almost zero waste, like 98% zero waste, which is hard to get there for years. But I couldn't figure out chips because they always come in plastic bags. So my trash can would almost never fill up. But when it did, it was like chip plastic bags. So now you can get them in a bucket. It's kind of so obvious. So those are blue corn chips or something? These are bean chips, actually. I love them with salsa, chili, nachos. Beet chips, big favorite. Beet chips, let's see this for the side of it, yeah. Yeah. My emotional favorite, I seem to remember, it was like the flat, these flax seeds. Yeah, I knew this was it. Yeah, here we go. Flax seed chips here. Ryan's always like, can you make these in bigger containers? Yeah, exactly. Those are essentially like healthy Frito chips. You know, some people think we're a specialist store with a very small range and actually would not. I do 100% of my shopping here for my whole family of four, two kids, and we have everything from baking, pastas, protein powders, oatmeal, peanut butter, almond butter, the whole shebang, like everything. And then we have a whole prepared food section, which is super exciting for people who are really busy, which is basically everyone. For people like me who don't really like cooking. Well, that, that works too. So yeah, we have a changing menu every week of three different meals, and they go from jar to table in five minutes flat. So it becomes, it's not like one of these prepared meals kits where you get a box with all the plastic and the containers, and you have to chop the tiny piece of pepper they give you. This comes fully cooked, you literally empty it, reheat it, put on the table. They have tons of produce, they do ugly, do you know what ugly fruit or ugly veggies are? Teach me. So the man, the conventional groceries, they only want apples that look perfect, but often they're not actually healthy. They're just kind of like boring, perfect, kind of like if you're dating someone who is like perfect, but they're boring, that's what a lot of fruit and veggies. So anything that doesn't look perfect, guess what they do? In this age of homelessness and poverty, they throw it away. So instead of that, various grocery stores, including nude foods, are selling ugly fruit and ugly veggies. This is something else that I buy a ton of organic oats, and this is only $2 for this giant jar. We went and did a single shop at a unnamed grocery store, and what we see which store. But this is just from one small shop, all the trash, from one shop. And then over here, this is all the trash from 100 shops and nude foods. There is nothing. And the same here, one takeout meal, that's the trash you're going to get. Talking of how long packaging, how bad packaging is, 450 years of plastic to buy a degrade. This is also something that I buy a ton of, organic raisins, $4 for this big jar. A lot of times people think, oh, these whole food types, hippie stores are expensive. What's the pricing like? So the pricing is reasonable, depending on what you get. So if you come with me right now, you can see all these yellow signs here, and they're not even on every product that is cheaper than Amazon Whole Foods. But we are on many things, and Rach would know better than I would on this, a lot cheaper. For example, laundry detergent. Laundry detergent, same price as Costco. Look at that, cheaper than Amazon Whole Foods. Yeah, we have tons of. So the great thing about zero waste is that for normal products and normal packaging, packaging often costs as much as the food or more. So there's a lot of types of things that we can offer a lot cheaper, because you're not paying for the packaging. We're using that packaging. Talk to us about the evils of plastic, the recycling, if it even happens, all that stuff. Well, first of all, everyone gets attached to being perfect. So the first thing they do when they don't actually want to change their habits is they say, well, you're not perfect. Your sweatshirt, like what I'm wearing, this is plastic. There's probably some plastic in this cotton. Number one, you have to agree. You actually have to care about the issue. So this sweatshirt will never return to the earth. It will always be kind of unfriendly to the planet. It'll never become soil again. So it's important with your clothes, with your groceries, with everything to leave plastic behind. This hat is like recycled plastic eco nylon. But 99% of our clothes now are plastic. Why? Because the world is starting to freak out about climate crisis as it should. And now all the oil companies are going into plastics. They want a 50x plastic in the next decade. So avoid plastic. It is toxic. It is related to cancer and lots of unhealthy things. It's related to oil wars. And even when you recycle it, which is almost never, it's like 4% or 5% of plastic worldwide is recycled. That's a crazy stat. Like think about that. Like recycling plastic is almost pointless. When it is recycled, you're basically melting down something toxic. And you can only recycle it once because it degrades. So just avoid it. Glass is beautiful. It's made out of sand. It's totally recyclable. Aluminum, 99% of all aluminum is already recycled. And recyclable steel, et cetera. There's all these good materials. Tin foil is fine, like with your burrito. You can recycle that. But plastic, naughty, naughty, naughty. This is a great example of a local product, actually. So these are Susan's samosas. She was a refugee when she came to Colorado. And she started a business during the pandemic making samosas. And they are one of our most popular items. We don't just care about packaging. We also really care about our sourcing, especially for really high impact foods like meat. So all of our meat actually comes from regenerative farms, which means that by raising the animals and rotating them properly, you can actually improve the health of the soil. You can sequester carbon. You can be part of a healthy food system by actually raising animals correctly. So we have ground beef and lamb. We're adding more cuts soon. But they're only from local farms, only regenerative. I personally visit every farm we go to to verify their practices. So we care a lot about that. Plastic packaging, remember, didn't exist. Like you watch an old movie, nothing plastic in the entire movie. How long ago was this? Well, plastic started in the 50s, 40s. They kind of came out of World War II mostly. But in the beginning, they were used for things that were going to stick around for a long time, like chairs or toys or something. Even then, I don't love it. But there's uses for plastic that are maybe appropriate. Remember, plastic, once you use it, will end up in a fish, in a bird, in a whale. Whales are starving to death because their tummies are so full of plastic. Same with bears. The bears in my neighborhood are breaking into the trash, eating the food. They get a lot of plastic in there. It's just awful. I mean, I always think if I were like Expo Facto, Harry Potterum, if I could do one spell, there'd be a lot of things, climate crisis, anti-racism. There's a lot of subjects that need help. Plastic is one of the evils of the world. It's like the ring in Lord of the Rings. Throw it in a mortar or be done with it. I love making smoothies. You can also buy frozen strawberries, mangoes, blueberries, and make epic smoothies. This is $4. And that's a lot of frozen strawberries. Don't stick your tongue to it, though. It gets stuck. Amazingly, we have John here from one of our most popular products, World Monkey Bar. So the whole idea was we wanted to reinvent the old school candy bars, creamy, crunchy, salty, sweet, and we're super proud of you working with nude foods because we really want to reduce our footprint as much as possible. Oh, my goodness. Oh, yeah, look at that. Look at that. There's granola on the bottom. There's cashew cream. John, you can probably tell more about the ingredients, but what I think makes it the most delicious is the salt on the outside. That is the game changer. So this is one of those things that you think are crazy, but actually are awesome. So this is next level zero waste. Not everyone is ready for this, but I have dipped my toe and I'm a total convert. These are amazing. They are pea cloths for women. Guys, not for you, I'm sorry. It's for women, but these are amazing and they're also really beautiful. I take them everywhere I go. This summer they went to Spain and England. They come camping with me everywhere. You just have a beautiful little bag. You use them as you'd imagine and then you put them in your bag and then throw them in the washing machine and job done they come out and they last a seriously long time. You'd be surprised and then you're not using so much of this stuff. Ryan, this is how you know you're at Nude Foods. Look at that price. We're not faking it. Don't fake it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, man. What are the chances? Pretty sexist. Every day he checks out, it's 69, 69. Boom, no matter what I get. A lot of my viewers don't live in Boulder and they might not have a Nude Foods. What advice do you give to them to live a less plasticky life and maybe they can even start their own Nude Foods? What's that? Awesome, well, before Nude Foods existed, I tried to live a less plasticky life and it is possible, but it takes some effort. So for example, shopping in the bulk section of mainstream stores, taking reusable containers there and doing as much shopping as you can. They're then buying things from the normal store, buying them in glass containers. So at least it's recyclable in a more meaningful way than perhaps plastic would be because plastic is downcycled rather than fully recycled whereas glass can be 100% recycled. Not when you go out for dinner, taking your own takeout containers rather than getting the brown boxes that look eco-friendly, which are not because they are also landfill. What else? Taking your own, if you fly, which is not particularly environmentally friendly, taking your own water bottle so you don't use the mountains of plastic that they provide you with. Having a reusable water bottle, wherever you go. Biking rather than driving, there are many things you can do if you look and if you Google zero-way stores, generally, there are a few in each town that we have looked into. Mostly bulk refill rather than, this is a very unique way of doing it. We haven't really seen anyone else doing this yet, but you can definitely go places and refill your own. I wanna thank you both so much for creating this amazing grocery store. You're saving the planet, you're awesome. Our pleasure, we're having fun at the same time. Have fun biking home. Bye, little bye, ladies. Bye. All right, my bags are full of groceries, mostly peanut butter and beans and stuff. All right, Wayland's somehow getting his bucket-o'd chips on the back of his bike, no problem. Bungie cords are a magic. Woo-hoo! All right, so the bike's a little heavier now, obviously, I can fit usually about 50 pounds of stuff into these bags right here. You know, if it was any heavier, I'd probably ride my e-bike. And if you're out there thinking, I wanna start doing this grocery biking thing, you know, go for it, give it a shot. It's fun, it makes every grocery shopping trip an adventure. And if you have a big family, hey, get a cargo bike or a trailer and you can figure it out. There's a lot of things we can do in this world without cars. You know what I'm saying? So thank you so much for watching this. I hope you learned something new. Nude Foods is incredible. I'm so impressed with what they're doing. They're really, you know, doing their part to save the world. And you can do it too, just by reducing your plastic use and being a little bit more mindful about the products you buy. And yes, it might be more expensive here and there, but you know, the earth will thank you for it. And your kids and your grandkids. So thank you so much for watching this video. I appreciate it. Send it to all your friends and subscribe and join my Patreon and send me a birthday card. Actually, you don't have to do that, but it is January 21st, so you've got some time. Anyway, I will see you later. I'm off to eat a whole ton of peanut butter.