A new store in Kingston, Ont. encourages you to go zero waste
A new shop in Kingston, Ont., is selling household products with a twist: the store is zero waste.
Shoppers bring the containers, or buy reusable ones at the store, and fill up the jars with the products they buy, in an effort to be more environmentally friendly.
The Keep Refillery: Kingston, located at 206 Princess St. W., sells everything from shampoo and conditioner, to make-up and household cleaning products.
Jasmine Lam, stopping in, says she’s trying to be a more sustainable shopper these days.
“I try to reduce my waste as best as possible. Where I can,” she explains.
Picking up hand sanitizer and a few other items, she is refilling her everyday items at the store. Lam says it’s far more efficient than recycling containers for her.
"I just filled up my hand sanitizer and you can, she let me choose a scent for the essential oils so I picked eucalyptus," she says. "They have a great selection of products and scents, which I love."
Store manager Amanda Richardson says the zero waste model hopes to help people rethink the way they consume.
"The idea is we want to curb the use of single-use plastics."
Richardson says people can bring any bottle in, it doesn’t matter.
"We don’t care about the size, it could be glass, it could be plastic. It could be a mason jar, it could be an old shampoo bottle that you were just about to toss out," she says. "Instead, what you’re doing is refilling and creating a more sustainable solution to a problem."
You bring your jar from home or you can get one at the store. You place it on the scale, and weigh it out, and record how much it weighs. Then you go over to the product you want to buy and simply fill the jar up.
The jar is then weighed again at the cash register, so that you're only paying for the product inside.
This is the third location in the province the owner has opened during the pandemic.
In an interview from her Creemore, Ont. location, just northwest of Toronto, Jacquie Rushlow says customers have responded.
“With everybody stuck at home, they’re now looking at the garbage they're creating, their understanding where their garbage ends up,” she says.
Rushlow began her career as a television and documentary producer and says she was inspired to make a change and open a store, after visiting Africa, and seeing that garbage is often shipped overseas.
She says another important feature of the store is that the suppliers also refill or repurpose the large bottles their product comes in once it’s all been sold, so that there’s no waste at all.
“I will research forever for that one product, that one supplier that ticks all of our boxes, so no plastic ever gets shipped here," said Rushlow. "They have to be responsible for their waste, so they have to take their empties back and more important the product has to work because if the product doesn’t work you’re going to go back to your plastic alternative.”
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
'I just can't believe that it took so long': Body found in wreckage 3 months after deadly fire
A man accused of arson in a January Old Strathcona apartment fire is expected to be charged with manslaughter after a body was discovered in the burned building late last month.
No proof man lied to brother about number of kittens born in litter, B.C. tribunal rules
A man was denied a $5,000 payout from his brother after a B.C. tribunal dismissed his claim disputing how many kittens were born in a litter.
Snakes almost on a plane: U.S. TSA discovers a bag with small snakes in passenger's pants
According to an X post by the Transportation Security Administration, officers at the Miami International Airport found the small bag of snakes hidden in a passenger's trousers on April 26 at a checkpoint.
Russia puts Ukrainian President Zelenskyy on its wanted list
Russia has put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on its wanted list, Russian state media reported Saturday, citing the interior ministry’s database.
The pros and cons of discussing mental health issues in the workplace
A group of lawyers has written what they call a groundbreaking book about how mental health is perceived in the legal profession.
Explosion at train station leads to discovery of stolen car on Montreal's South Shore: police
Police are investigating after a BMW exploded in the St-Lambert Exo train station parking lot on Montreal's South Shore.
A Chinese driver is praised for helping reduce casualties in a highway collapse that killed 48
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
A candidate for Germany's key party was beaten up while campaigning for European elections
A candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left party in next month's election for the European Parliament was beaten up and seriously injured while campaigning in an eastern city, the party said Saturday.
Two killed after collision with truck on Hwy. 417 near Limoges, Ont.
Ontario Provincial Police say two people were killed after a car and a transport truck collided in the westbound lanes of Highway 417 near Limoges, Ont. on Tuesday afternoon.