We are fortunate to live in Bude as it leads the way in so many ‘green’ initiatives, but after visiting refill shops elsewhere in the country, we began thinking how good it would be to have something similar in our town. 

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 of eight; Deb, Genevieve, Jackie, Jodie, Karen, Lou, Rachel and Sue began to see our efforts bear fruit. We are all volunteers who 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 our profits back to local community groups. The shop was initially staffed by volunteers but just six months after opening, the business was established enough to offer work to local people at the national 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….

*Want to know more about social enterprises? Click here to find out more.