The Range of Refillable
How Ann Arbor businesses are filling jars instead of landfills
—By Jordan Pinet
With a car full of 5-gallon jugs, Emily Holiday makes her rounds as Washtenaw County’s “modern-day milkman.” But her containers aren’t filled with local dairy. Instead, they hold everything from dish soap to laundry detergent to body wash, and they’re the products of the newest bulk goods business to serve Ann Arbor. Holiday’s business, Michigan Refillery, opened this past summer as a delivery service of refillable products at accessible price points. Though based in Ypsilanti, the 20-mile delivery radius serves most of Ann Arbor, and is one of many businesses offering consumers a way to avoid more plastic waste.
In a world increasingly under threat to climate change, and the eco-anxiety that comes with it, people are looking for more and more ways to make their own lives less wasteful. For many businesses, that’s where refillables come in: from bringing in your own cup at Starbucks to grinding fresh peanut butter at the People’s Food Co-op, Ann Arbor is full of businesses saying no to single-use plastic packaging. But is this push towards saving every glass jar we have as sustainable as it appears? And in a world where plastic-wrapped everything has become the norm, is it even possible?
The problem with plastic
Walk down any neighborhood street in Ann Arbor on trash day, and you’ll undoubtedly see a blue recycling bin next to every trash one. For many years, this magical blue bin held the promise of a way to keep plastic away from the landfill. However, as public concern over the climate emergency increases, so too does awareness of how little of what we recycle actually goes through the renewal process. According to Smithsonian Magazine, “of the 40 million tons of plastic waste generated in the United States last year, only five to six percent…was recycled.”
This miniscule percentage is nothing compared to what instead ends up in landfills and waterways. Called plastic “leak,” the quantity of plastic waste that makes its way out of the waste stream and into the marine environment is so high that, according to The Guardian, it is “the equivalent of dumping a garbage truck filled with plastic into the ocean every single minute.”
With such drastic consequences on the environment, it’s no wonder that small businesses like Bløm Meadworks are hopping on the sustainable train. Co-owned by Lauren and Matt Bloom, the local meadery offers refillable 64-ounce growlers and 32-ounce howlers for all their regular drink flavors. Lauren says of the company, “At home we try to be really mindful of our consumption…so we try to share as much of that mindset and kind of shape the business with that mindset as much as we can.”
Refillable products are the latest holy grail of zero-waste living, but this doesn’t necessarily make them sustainable. In an interview with Time Magazine, U-M Environment and Sustainability professor Shelie Miller discussed how with any reusable item, there’s a “payback period,” or “a number of times it must be reused before it’s actually better for the environment than the single-use alternative.”
This payback period is the crucial distinction between reducing landfill waste and delaying its arrival. With a different payback period for every type of container, it can be hard for individuals to track if an item is used enough to make up for the energy required to produce it. However, remembering to reuse still often remains an easier task than navigating confusing recycling regulations. Ann Arbor alone has an entire website dedicated to explaining the rules for each number and type of container, and that only counts for home recycling.
Refill without regret
For businesses navigating how to control their waste stream, offering refillable options is one way to mitigate their environmental impact. But this change in practice comes with the challenge of making sure the effort of bringing containers doesn’t discourage customers. Luckily, sustainability is only one of several reasons people choose to refill.
One way that local businesses are encouraging refills is with discounts for bringing in reusables. At Bløm, every growler and howler refill are over four dollars cheaper than the price to buy a new full container. They also offer a six-month pre-paid growler membership where members get a discounted rate and access to special small batch flavors. Though still a relatively new trend in the city, Bloom says, “Ann Arbor tends to be a pretty curious community…because you know people are open to come in and even just have a conversation about what [the meadery is].” Kerrytown grocery store Sparrow Market is following suit with a one-dollar discount on olive oil with an original bottle refill.
Though it takes extra work, it’s clear that Ann Arbor residents are up to the challenge of refillables, as they’ve been a part of the fabric since the 70s. People’s Food Co-op opened back in 1971 with bulk food offerings, and remains a popular spot with even more refills to offer. Carrying everything from grains, spices, and grind your own coffee, the Co-op offers a variety of bulk food items that can be purchased in tared personal containers or co-op plastic or glass ones available for purchase and reuse.
Kerrytown resident Luke Hunter attests to the positive environment around refillable shopping in Ann Arbor. When doing regular grocery shopping, he usually brings “a few grocery bags and whatever jars are empty from the week.” Living close to downtown, “I usually bop to the co-op when I need spices. It’s nice because when I first started out, I could just buy the shakers I needed.”
But not everyone lives so conveniently close. For those folks, Michigan Refillery has hopped on the trend with a new angle—bringing the refills to your door. Holiday says, “It can be intimidating to start living low waste…. I live in Ypsi so it wasn’t always the easiest thing to get [to] downtown Ann Arbor and find parking and take my containers… This is a really good solution for people to live sustainably and reduce waste, but in a much more convenient manner.”
Circular economy, circular community
What stands out most about this shift towards the refillable is not just the connection to our waste streams, but the connection it has created between the city’s businesses and people. Many of the businesses involved in the trend have had great encouragement from the community and each other. “Everybody. Professionals and customers have all been super supportive and amazing,” emphasizes Holiday.
Bloom agrees, “Ann Arbor really is this fabric of small independent businesses, and the way that they support each other is really incredible.” A model of the very support that she appreciates, she spoke of how at Bløm they also purchase “hand soap…and a couple different cleaners” from BYOC Co., another refill store in the area.
Both BYOC Co. and Michigan Refillery continue this emphasis on community and care in their own businesses, as they carry local Michigan products and ingredients. This local sourcing is an important part of their efforts in creating a closed loop, or circular economy, where materials are in circulation for as long as possible. Holiday loves how businesses such as “Fresh Coast Clean…offer[s] closed loop container systems, so when I’m done with the bulk containers I can take them back, and they’ll reuse them,” she says. “There’s not even a 5 gallon bucket being wasted in this.” Even the People’s Food Co-op remains a standard of the trend, with its foundation built on co-ownership by the community.
Beyond the bottle
From chatting in storefronts to containers left outside people’s homes, sustainability is becoming an even greater part of our everyday lives. But with distance and time barriers to this sustainable lifestyle, will people remember to slow down enough to remember to pack their jars? Whatever the case, with community support between businesses and loyal customers, it appears that the variety of refillable goods available in Ann Arbor won’t be slowing down anytime soon. And though the refills may not be a perfect solution, as Holiday says, “it just shows…more and more Michiganders are starting to figure out some solutions to keep our state and everywhere just clean and happy and healthy.”
Feature photo by KINN Living on Unsplash