The first real change I made was to buy a bamboo toothbrush. I’ve since discovered that a bamboo toothbrush is the most common first purchase on a journey to reducing plastic - the humble toothbrush. Such a small thing, but it led me to think ‘what next’? I found it a challenge to reduce my plastic consumption whist shopping in the Highlands. But I was spurred on by the snippets of information I came across : microplastics in our food chain; the land mass required to produce the food that’s thrown away every year (the size of China) and the mere 12 minutes that the average single-use plastic bag is used for (which will take 1000 years to decompose). The mission became to create a store that offered plastic-free food, toiletries and cleaning products. To reduce food wastage by allowing customers to buy just the quantities they need.

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Within the store we envisioned an ethical, vegetarian coffee shop selling organic coffee, produced by solar power. The vision of The Highland Weigh was born. We don’t profess to being a new concept. It’s an old concept, that our parents and grandparents will recall but with a modern twist with self-serve scales, gravity dispensers and a peanut butter machine. We can’t compete with the buying power of the large supermarkets, but we can strive to bring you the best local products, plastic free and at the most competitive prices we can manage.

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The Highland Weigh, a social enterprise, founded in January 2022. We are all at different stages on our zero-waste journey and frankly, we would just love you to visit us and have fun weighing your lentils, making a batch of peanut butter with your kids, and drinking your coffee by our wood burner.

Because apparently - ‘Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there’ Rumi

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We’ll see you soon, at The Highland Weigh.