We are fortunate to live in Bude as it leads the way in so many ‘green’ initiatives but a few of us had visited refill shops elsewhere in the country and began thinking how good it would be to have something similar in Bude. We realised that, often, reducing packaging meant buying ‘premium’ products which made it unaffordable for many so we decided to take the bull by the horns and open a shop that met these needs ourselves!

Many months of hard work later, our group grew to eight; Deb, Genevieve, Jackie, Jodie, Karen, Lou, Rachel and Sue. We are volunteers who all live locally (either in Bude or one of the surrounding villages) and share both a passion for protecting the environment and desire to bring zero waste shopping to our town.

We wanted to make this a truly local project and quickly decided to operate as a Social Enterprise so we formed a Community Interest Company which will give 100% of its profits back to local community groups. The shop was initially staffed by us and  volunteers but once the business was established, we were able to offer work to local people at the living wage.

In November 2021 we moved from our original premises in Belle Vue Lane, to a larger, more accessible space in Lansdown Road.

2020 – now has presented unexpected challenges, such as COVID restrictions, and rising prices and stock availability because of Brexit and now the war in Europe, but we are committed to our original aims: to enable you to shop locally in a way that helps you reduce single use plastics;  to enable you to buy only what you need. For older people, those on limited incomes or people living alone this is a major benefit as often supermarket shopping promotes buying in larger quantities for ‘better value’.

We’re so excited that our dream has finally become a reality and we really look forward to seeing you soon….