When Shanti Jourdan received her first bicycle delivery of laundry detergent, Epsom salt and olive oil from Re-Up Refill Shop in Oakland, she thought she had found the holy grail.
“I’ve been really into the idea of zero waste and reuse instead of recycle since I was a young teenager,” said Jourdan, 30, an Oakland yoga instructor and astrologer. She posted Instagram photos of the jugs and jars, neatly labeled with embossed black tape. “It felt like it was too good to be true.”
That was late 2020, the year Re-Up Refill Shop opened selling bulk products in reusuable containers out of a few shipping containers in West Oakland. The company has since expanded to a retail store in Rockridge, during a period when several similar businesses started around the Bay Area — all focused on avoiding single-use plastic.
Called zero-waste or refill stores, these shops specialize in products such as nontoxic glass cleaner and foaming organic hand soap that customers can pour into their own repurposed vessels. The variety of household cleaners and body products can eclipse that of the most dedicated co-op grocer.
Proponents say reducing or eliminating single-use plastic is vital to addressing ocean pollution and climate change — the latter because of the petroleum products, and their emissions, involved in making plastics. Though it has roots going back decades, the Bay Area zero-waste movement was starting to hit the mainstream before the pandemic. Cafes began proclaiming all-out bans on single-use cups, and tech companies announced they would serve employee meals in reusable containers rather than plastic clam shells.
But that momentum was lost when the pandemic hit. Public health ordinances forbid the use of reusable cups and shopping bags as well as bulk-bin shopping at the grocery store. Customers responded to the uncertainty with a spike in online shopping.
According to waste management company Recology, packaging from increased restaurant takeout meals and online consumption during shelter-in-place helped increase San Francisco residential waste by 6% from May 2019 to May 2020. At retail giant Amazon, plastic waste increased 29% from 2019 to 2020, according to a report from the conservation group Oceana.
Once it became clear that surfaces were not the main vector for the coronavirus, however, owners of refill businesses say sales began to soar, perhaps as a reaction against the rise in plastic packaging.
“Having to sit with the total amount of plastic they were consuming kind of became overwhelming,” said Aubri Thompson of the skincare line the Rebrand, which sells facial cleansers and moisturizers in glass jars. When customers run out, they can order refills in aluminum containers, which are more recyclable. “In some ways COVID was a kind of a trigger.”
Thompson, who started the company in 2020, manufactures her products in Oakland and sells bulk versions at refill stores such as Resourcefill in Lafayette, Fillgood in Berkeley and Re-Up Refill Shop. There are now at least 10 such stores in the region. Most specialize in household goods and personal care products that are hard to find elsewhere, though some also carry bulk food products.
Many customers note that so many everyday products come in plastic, from washed lettuce greens to dish soap, yet very little of that plastic is recyclable. In the United States, the world’s biggest plastic consumer, only 8.7% of plastic is recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
“We’re trapped in the cycle of ‘wishcycling.’ People feel good about throwing their plastics into the recycling bin and thinking it has a second life,” said Matt Zimbalist, co-owner of Re-Up Refill Shop.
Legislation has sought to reduce the amount of plastic in circulation, including California’s 2014 ban on single-use shopping bags. Introduced in 2021, the federal Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act would prohibit certain types of single-use plastics that aren’t recyclable and require minimal recycled content for some plastic products. But such efforts have had limited impact.
For Joan Ayers, a turning point in her life was learning that China was no longer accepting plastic recycling from the U.S. in 2018 and that most of it was simply being sent to the landfill. In 2020, she started her business, Homebody Refill, by bringing bulk containers of hair, body, kitchen and laundry products to Petaluma and Santa Rosa farmers’ markets, where customers could dispense them into their own jars.
“I’m not an activist, but I like my individual voice being heard somehow,” she said. “I’m going to change my buying habits, and I’m going to try to help others do the same.”
Last year Ayers opened a retail store in Sebastopol. She buys products from companies such as Oakland’s Puretergent, which delivers its all-purpose cleaner, laundry detergent and dish soap in 5-gallon plastic carboys that it picks up to refill.
That’s an example of the circular economy, the idea that more of the world’s limited natural resources should be kept in use and reused rather than thrown away.
Mudlab, a cafe and store in Oakland, is an example of how the circular economy concept comes into play when customers purchase pint jars of pickles and preserves from Happy Girl Kitchen, a Monterey County company. They pay a $1 deposit that they get back when they return the jars, which Mudlab washes and uses in a cup rental program in the cafe, to avoid single-use cups.
Amanda Drexler, 24, who buys skin care products from the Rebrand and bulk foods and other products at Re-Up, said prices in the refill world are lower than the conventional market for some products, especially food, while others are comparable or higher.
For those who are interested in reducing plastic waste, she recommends starting with just one sector of your life, such as bringing empty shampoo bottles and refilling them in a refill shop. The bottles can be reused for years.
“Take it one step at a time,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be an overnight transformation.”
Tara Duggan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tduggan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @taraduggan