Anna Marino's Mason & Greens shop, just a few blocks away from the US Congress, is a zero-waste grocery store selling rice and pasta from bulk food dispensers and meat alternatives without packaging directly from a freezer. In nearby Takoma Park, Maryland, Emoke Gaidosch makes liquid soap, shampoo bars and other care and cleaning products on sale at Fullfillery, another zero-waste business where the vast majority of the packaging either contains no plastic or is being reused. Rini Saha, one the shop's three co-owners, says zero-waste retail is "profitable," though not as much as traditional stores relying on disposable packaging. "But I think that inevitably, there's no choice," Saha says. "This is the way that business has to go." IMAGES AND SOUNDBITES ARRANGED IN SEQUENCES