Why Refill? Frequently we’re asked, “What made you want to open a refill shop?” Lately we have been thinking about that question more and more…

It really all began with laundry detergent containers. Like most of America, we too liked to buy laundry soap in a very large container. Every time we would put that large container in the recycling bin, we would feel such dread because we knew they were not all getting recycled, if any. We started researching brands that put liquid detergent in non plastic containers and learned there wasn’t much choice there. Then we researched refillable options. This brought us to the world of refill shops. We learned that there were actual stores where you could refill everything from laundry soap to shampoo to body lotion. We were immediately intrigued.

Did you know that only 9% of our plastic gets recycled? The rest of it gets put in the landfill where it will stay for thousands of years. It turns out that making new plastic is much cheaper than recycling it. We had always assumed that if you put a plastic jug in the brown recycling bin then it was recycled. We now know that this is not the truth. We started to get less interested in recycling and more interested in reducing and reusing. The average American produces 4.5 pounds of trash each day. This seems like quite a bit. We’ve got to focus on how we can refill our containers with new products, to cut down on single use plastic, because it’s not going anywhere.

That’s why we opened the store in March of 2019 in our garage at home. We wanted to have a place for our community to go to work on reducing and reusing together. We  look forward to seeing our customers and learning about their low waste journey. They have taught us so much. In October 2021 we moved the store out of the garage and into a retail location. We keep track of how many pounds of plastic we have kept out of the landfill. Each time we change the number of items on our chalkboard we are filled with gratitude for each and every person who has helped us on this journey.

Hope to see you at the shop.

Julie and Emma