Soho's green consumer guide...

By Lauren McGregor

Calling all you green consumers out there…we have been out on the streets of Soho, well for 55 mins, talking to local businesses about what green products they sell. So, here is your guide to green products in Soho.

Our first stop was the ‘Just Falafs’ restaurant which amazed us with all of the green initiatives they are doing for their business.

Chris Skinner, manager of the restaurant, told us that all of the electricity used by both of their shops is 100 per cent renewable from Ecotricity, (Wind Power), and their delivery van is powered by liquid-powered gas.

The food products are not only sustainable but are also organic while the packaging is 100 per cent biodegradable.

Our second stop was Cousting and Wilcox Ltd, an artist materials shop. There we spoke with a member of staff, who showed us their quite small and unobvious, recycled products section. They had a really nice selection of quirky slogans on their products, like: ‘I used to be a plastic box…’.

Unfortunately these products have not been selling so well, but we think that they would if people knew more about them.

The overall winner of today was Pret a Manager who are doing amazing things. The manager of one of their shops in Soho, confirmed that all their products are organic, fair trade and sourced from the UK (apart from their Basil).

Even their juice is juiced locally and an initiative to recycle all of their waste products will be introduced before Christmas. They already use charities such as Centre Point and Jesus Fellowship, to whom they give all of their sandwiches and salads to at the end of the day to help the homeless.

Our visit to Starbucks has been quite different for the one to Pret. We were greeted with a resounding ‘No!’ and when I queried more I found that they did have Fair Trade products, but failed to use local produce, charities for waste food or have in place any initiatives that would help others.

While we were walking around I had an idea for another category of biodegradable product – condoms 😉 Where better to look then Soho. There must be so much waste produced by them, is it being dealt with?

Unfortunately I was unable to find the answer but did find an assortment of rechargeable vibrators in Ann Summers… ☺

So all in all, we found quite a lot of green information from retailers – something we were pleasantly surprised at.