How buying soap from Yellowknife's new zero waste refillery is a climate action

Refilling a container with soap from a newly opened zero-waste business in Yellowknife, N.W.T., is a way people can take action to curb climate change, according to the program coordinator of Zero Waste Yukon. 

Nested inside the Mermaid and Moon Boutique on 47th Avenue, YK Refillery gives people the opportunity to purchase dish soap, hand soap and laundry detergent in their own containers — rather than having to buy a whole new bottle. 

"Down the line, we're looking at bringing in shampoos and conditioners and other beauty products," explained Meredith McNulty, who owns the boutique. "[It's] a more low waste way of accessing these products." 

McNulty said people can bring in their own clean containers, or buy ones that are being sold in store. Those containers are weighed, filled with product, and then weighed again so the customer only pays for the amount of product they want. 

The business opened in early December, and McNulty said the feedback so far has been positive. 

"Every day, people are coming and refilling or there's people that see it and they ask a lot of questions. So it's been a good opportunity to even just like start conversations about why having a refillery is important." 

Scott Dudiak, the program coordinator of Zero Waste Yukon, says waste reduction and the world's climate change crisis can not be separated from each other. 

"The production of anything, and it's not just plastics, is tied to climate change," he said. "If you don't have to make something twice, then you're reducing that carbon."

Dudiak talked about disposable coffee lids to illustrate his point. 

Coffee cup lids are made out of plastic that is typically derived from fossil-fuel based chemicals, like natural gas or petroleum "that was pulled from the Earth" in a resource-intensive extraction process. 

The material was "shipped all around the world" and then "finishes on top of your coffee cup" where it is used for about 10 minutes before being sent to landfill, he said. 

A study from Environment and Climate Change Canada found that in Canada, only nine per cent of plastics are recycled — the rest is either incinerated, landfilled, or ends up in the environment. 

"The whole concept of disposability is out of sync with everything else in nature," said Dudiak. "There's no consequence, there's no relationship with that material, there's no relationship with the land." 

Dawn Tremblay, the executive director of Ecology North in the N.W.T., agreed that reducing waste is "definitely" a type of climate action.