About
Circa 1978, Bainbridge Island, Washington
Hiking in Vail, Colorado
HONORING NATURE
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, on Bainbridge Island, surrounded by water and natural beauty. Every weekend my dad would pick a different river or lake to swim in or mountain trail to hike. We were constant outdoor adventurers. My family is made of protectors of nature and people - working for the Environmental Protection Agency, GreenPeace, and the Public Defenders for Seattle. During college in San Diego, I became a student guide for camping, climbing and kayaking and surfed whenever I could. I have always felt outside is better than inside. In my professional life, I am a graphic designer, I love beautiful design and well-crafted products. One of my proudest moments in my career has been getting to re-design the websites for 13 National Parks, honoring nature through my design. Now, I’m raising my family in Colorado. I’m doing my part by launching fill & refill, a bulk refill store, committed to reducing plastics in nature.
“My family is made of protectors of nature and people. ”
ONE MONTH OF TRASH
It all started on a field trip to the local recycling center with my second-grade daughter. The un-purchased bales of plastic recycling were stacking up Wall-E style. It is real. In the business of recycling, if the tons of plastic are not purchased to be remade into more bottles, they literally stack and stack and stack. All that for just moments of using hand soap or shampoo or laundry soap?
How much was my family contributing to the plastic pile-up? Turns out - it was big. In September of 2017, I collected all of my family’s plastic garbage - just one month of plastic garbage covered an entire picnic table. I was stuck in the wasteful loop of re-purchasing an exact duplicate of what I had just thrown away. Each month, my family was wasting natural resources and contributing garbage to landfills and eventually rivers, lakes and streams. Yes, we are consistent recyclers. However, I learned that just because you put your waste in the recycle bin, it doesn’t mean it gets recycled. 91%* of all plastic does not get recycled. I couldn’t throw away any more perfectly good containers. That was my turning point.
* National Geographic
Bales of un-purchased plastic
My plastic trash for a month
“What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
BEING THE CHANGE
I knew there had to be a better choice for buying the things I use daily. Buying bulk and using a container I already owned was the answer. In my family, in the next week we will run out of one of the products we use daily - hand soap, dish soap, dishwasher detergent, laundry soap and shampoo/body wash. We will have empty containers; I will refill them. I’m bringing you the opportunity to do that with me. Come join me, Thank you.
