To celebrate the end of Plastic Free July we’re featuring a blog post from local plastic free hero Loren Howell. Loren writes about how attending a Life Without Plastic event at the Canberra Environment Centre some years ago inspired her own Zero Waste journey. Loren now runs The Plastic Free Shop at the Fyshwick Markets.

The Plastic Free Shop is a concept I have been developing for some time. It is very much a reflection and a result of my own personal journey of living ‘plastic free,’ a journey that began about five years ago immediately after attending the Canberra Environment Centre’s Life Without Plastic event, where I became aware of the tremendous impact plastic is having on our ecosystem. Back then, people thought it was peculiar when I carried around reusable straws and refused plastic ones. This was pre- ‘War on Waste’ days, so I was constantly explaining myself while hoping to educate others around me at the same time. Five years passed, and local governments around the nation are taking measures to phase out single-use plastic, with most people much more conscious of their consumption and understand that ultimately when we purchase a product, we purchase the waste that comes with it.

The Plastic Free Shop started as a market stall at the Eco-Elves Night Market run by the Canberra Environment Centre, where I sold my handmade beeswax foodwraps, a few other ‘simple swaps,’ such as reusable straws, drink bottles and coffee cups, along with bathroom biodegradables like bamboo toothbrushes. Personally, however, one of the most challenging aspects of life without plastic was the personal care component, especially because a lot of the ‘natural’ and organic’ products were still packaged in plastic, which just didn’t make sense to me. For while there my skin care routine became completely zero waste – I made my own toothpaste and deodorant, I washed my hair with coconut soap followed up by an apple cider vinegar rinse, I moisturised with aloe vera or jojoba oil, and to cleanse my face it got to the point where I was just using homemade oat milk. Sometimes I would purchase shampoo and conditioner at the local bulk-food store, and although bulk-food stores do an amazing job of minimising waste when it comes to food, I was finding the options so far just weren’t providing the nourishment I needed. My problematic skin was not coping.

This ignited my quest for high-quality-low-waste personal care products that worked for me and the environment. The Plastic Free Shop began to evolve into something much more than reusable and biodegradable everyday alternatives to plastics, with emerging vision of a zero-waste beauty store where customers can bring in their own bottles to be refilled with the finest quality hair care and skin care products on the spot – a concept I now call ‘Beauty on Tap.’

My ethos is so simple - if a product comes in plastic, it won’t make it through the door - and my unwillingness to waver on this means that I now have brands working to find ways to supply their product in bulk, for zero-waste refills in store. Others have even changed their packaging for me, which might be as simple as wrapping something in tissue paper rather than plastic shrink wrap. And this works on all levels, even the manufacturers for my own brand ship my products without plastic, and any large plastic containers are sent back to the manufacturers to be reused for my next shipment.

So how does Beauty on Tap work? Prices are calculated based on volume, so you can either bring in your own bottles or you can purchase one in store. Apart from that there is still a huge range of sustainable products in store - such as natural cleaning products, natural toothpaste and toothpowders, natural deodorants, and great food-prep items like reusable baking mats, and of course the product that started it all, beeswax foodwraps.

Location:

The Plastic Free Shop is located at Shop 29 of the Niche Markets, inside Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets, behind Lifeline Books.

Opening hours:

Thursday & Friday 10am-5pm

Saturday & Sunday 9am-5pm