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 has grown 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 will initially be staffed by volunteers but we hope that once the business is established we will be able to offer work to local people and have committed to pay the living wage.

Our main aim is to enable people to shop locally in a way that helps them reduce single use plastics but another important aspect of this type of shopping is that it enables 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 is finally becoming a reality and we really look forward to seeing you soon….,