About Us

SWOP was founded in late 2022 by us - Ava and Lars.

We are two passionate hikers and campers that share a deep love for our planet and its wildlife. Walking along a beautiful beach with the sea breeze in our face or exploring a damp forest with the birds around us and the fresh scent of rain in our nose. That has always been our way to recharge our batteries and connect to earth.

Our passion for exploring the great outdoors brought us to some of the most remote and stunning places on Earth. Yet even there, we were heartbroken by the amount of plastic waste we found in the most beautiful remote places.

For years we’ve complained about “those people”, picked up a little trash here and there, and lived our regular lives. But then we looked around us in our daily routine and realized that the problem did not start with a few individuals littering in nature. The problem started with our personal choices and the massive amount of waste we produced as consumers in the first place.

Around five years ago we decided to do something about it and started exploring alternatives to single-use plastic products. Overwhelmed by the plastic in our lives and underwhelmed by the alternatives, we decided to take baby steps (or baby swops 😉). Every month, we picked a plastic item that was nearing replacement. We looked for a sustainable alternative and tried it. If we were happy with the alternative, we kept using it and moved on to the next item. If we weren’t happy, we just kept exploring other alternatives, until we found one that satisfied us.

We believe that living a zero-waste lifestyle is not about perfection, but rather about making conscious choices every day to reduce our impact on the planet. It's about choosing sustainable alternatives to disposable products, reusing what we already have, and educating ourselves about what happens to the waste we produce. The smallest changes can have a huge impact and will help to preserve the beauty of our planet for generations to come.

In 2022 we decided to share some of the alternatives that helped us in our lives with the rest of the world. After 2 1/2 years of talking about it and being too afraid of starting an online business, we finally launched our SWOP – shop without plastic.

Let us all make this world a better place – swop by swop.