The store is full of thoughtfully selected items and the owners are ready to explain the pros and cons of each product depending on your needs.

I am already in love with the personal care products I bought. We will be back to refill! Beautiful shop in the heart of downtown Aurora. Thrilled to finally have a business dedicated to reducing waste and supporting sustainable living in York Region! The owners are so friendly and knowledgeable, and make it a priority to stock local and Canadian-made products.

Check it out for all your household needs in store or online today. Great selection of locally made products priced very decently!

I ordered online and each item is described well in detail ingredients, usage, care instructions, size, etc. Delivery was super fast! Plastic free packaging! I was especially excited to find Ontario made Beeswax Lined Linen Bread Bag!

Perfect item to store my family favourite home made or a local store freshly made bread! Thanks for bringing to us locally made and sustainable products at great prices! Instagram Facebook. Shop with Heart.

NEW LOCATION! The concept of sustainability is inherently contradictory when you consider that the "cure" for consumerism and throw-away culture is to stop shopping not increase sales of a new product packaging option.

The Consumer Paradox. Consumers indicate they want more sustainable product options from brands. However, large-scale adoption of these types of products is still lagging. This could be due to various reasons, such as perceived inconvenience, hygiene concerns, or a simple lack of options.

This disconnect between consumers' expressed values and their purchasing behaviour forms the core of the consumer paradox. The Brand Paradox. Next, we have a paradox within the industry itself. Brands are eager to meet the demands for improved sustainability but face the challenge of meeting their customers' shopping preferences and maintaining their brand image.

For some brands, maintaining specific label appeal and unboxing experiences is critical to their business model. The choice here is tricky - go all-in on sustainability, potentially compromising brand appeal, or find a middle ground where sustainability and consumer expectations coexist.

Trying to balance what consumers say they want sustainability with what actually drives their purchasing behaviour brand loyalty, luxury, sensorial experiences, elaborate unboxing is one of the ways you end up in a situation with greenwashing - brands over-emphasizing the appearance of sustainability improvements that are not actually meaningful.

The Impact Paradox. Lastly, there's the impact paradox - where efforts to improve sustainability seem significant at first glance, but the net effect is negligible. It's not greenwashing in the sense that the change is meaningful and not being dishonestly overstated, but the impact needs to be bigger to be noticeable due to issues of scale.

For instance, a brand might introduce refills that reduce plastic and shipping weight, seemingly a win for the environment. However, the actual reduction in net plastic waste per product is negligible.

So, unless sales are in the millions per unit , is the change worth it? It's crucial to understand these paradoxes as they underpin the challenges consumers and brands face in deciding whether to adopt refillable packaging.

Navigating Market Research Challenges. For small, independent brands looking to navigate the sustainable skincare industry, there needs to be more readily available market research data to guide informed decision-making.

Many larger corporations conduct extensive in-house market research but keep the results confidential for competitive reasons. Market research firms also provide insights, but their reports are behind steep paywalls. This leaves smaller brands in a challenging position, grappling with limited access to necessary data.

Addressing the Information Gap. As a brand owner who sells refillable products, my bias favours refillable options.

We believe that building sustainability into your business model from day one will allow the future impact to be significant, despite not selling millions of units at the outset. In asking these questions, the intent is to discover and share valuable insights, thereby aiding the industry's shift toward sustainable practices.

This article shares new information to help understand why brands aren't selling, and consumers aren't buying refillable skincare products. The goal is to provide easy-to-understand data for brands looking to navigate this sustainable market more effectively.

The hope is that this contribution will stimulate a collaborative effort toward a more sustainable future in personal care. A survey was distributed broadly with no limitations on age or gender. Participation was solicited via email list, paid and unpaid social media, and using a survey distribution service.

The people who answered demographic questions were female, university-educated, primarily between ages , and American. It's important to note that the population surveyed largely included consumers who were sustainably-minded, due to the email lists and social media channels utilized.

This selection bias was intentional as we wanted to survey people dedicated to sustainability and find out exactly why they specifically use or don't use refillable products. Overall, However, only The remainder were mostly makeup ie. refillable eye shadow palettes. This confirms there is a disconnect and suggests there are either barriers to adoption or a perception that refills do not improve sustainability.

The final portion of the survey looked at consumer perceptions of the different types of skincare refill options and had them rate how sustainable each option was. The sustainability winner was large containers that could be taken to a refill station or storefront for bulk filling.

Participants added that this option could be further improved by having brands stop selling primary packaging altogether i. Take an upcycled mason jar to the filling station.

The perceived greenwashing loser was containers you mail back to the brand for processing and refilling. When considering the environmental impact and greenwashing factor, consumers rated the different types of product refill options as follows:. Consumers want refillable products, and they perceive the best option as being a large container that gets filled at a storefront.

In that case, that is a very different type of product. To further answer the question about barriers to adopting skincare refills, a second survey was developed and distributed via social media channels to specific private groups for skincare formulators and entrepreneurs.

Our experience with this second survey was unexpected. The survey was accessed times with only 13 responses 4 of which were incomplete. While this is likely partially due to recruitment issues, it reflects hesitancy for brands to relinquish any perceived competitive advantage.

The low response rate renders this portion of the research largely unhelpful, but there were still insights gained. There were 7 that reported varying degrees of interest, but none were actively developing a refill program.

Both consumers and brands feel the most sustainable method of offering product refills is through a program where consumers take their containers to a local refill station. The challenges with this method are related to infrastructure, distribution, and scale.

Without substantial coordination, this model only works for small, indie brands with a local presence or massive brands with their own stores and distribution network i.

The issue? Customers are loyal to brands and want options.