John Farrow introduced today's speaker Jacquie Rushlow, co-owner of the Keep Refillery in Kingston. Jacquie and her husband opened their first store in Creemore in March 2020, then another location in Meaford, and then a location in Kingston December 2021. The concept is using your containers to refill your shampoo, hand soap, dish soap, laundry soap etc. from bulk containers and reducing plastic waste.Jacquie shocked us by saying plastics are everywhere in our environment. Products like laundry soap contain microplastics as fillers - good for the company. Bad for your body. Canadians ingest a credit card sized amount of plastic every month from the environment. It's in your bloodstream, it's in your lungs. Gross. Three million kilograms of plastic waste is generated in Canada EVERY DAY. The Keep Refillery's products are all natural, biodegradable, and plastic free. You can bring in your old container, weigh it, and pay for the product by weight. Pretty much anything you use in your household can be bought in bulk, and you save money by buying a concentrated product and not paying for a container.
An important thing for Jacquie was sourcing products from Canadian companies, many of them run by women. The company is a mission first corporation, and she feels if all the mission boxes are checked their business will be successful. For example, suppliers are responsible for their waste - new bulk jugs are delivered, old containers go back to the supplier for refilling and closing the loop. So, trust is a huge part of their corporate ethos. Products have to work well. Communities need to care enough to help them effect change.
Jacquie answered many questions about her business, and invited us all to come down and visit. The address is Princess Street, and the website is https://www.thekeeprefillery.com/pages/kingston-store.
You can access Jacquie's full talk at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLp2XmR40EU