Ethical Gift Shop & Refillery Weighs Through Major Milestone

By Ethical Gift Shop and Refillery on 16/06/2022

We are over the moon to have weighed ourselves through a major milestone and recorded almost 27,000 refills.

Established in 2007, our shop, which sells all manner of eco-friendly items, started refilling bottles of washing up liquid with an eco-friendly brand back in 2014. Since then our Refillery has grown in popularity and now boasts over 260 products which are available as refills.  These products range from everyday food essentials, to more exotic herbs and spices, as well as a range of health and beauty products and household cleaning products.

We are very proud of our reputation both within Aberdeenshire and further afield.  We’re also proud of our customers and their willingness to help us do our bit to save the environment and reduce the amount of plastic that gets sent to landfill or worse, goes into our oceans and destroys its valuable ecosystems.
We average about 170 refills every week (approx. 29 a day).  We count the number of bottles, tubs, tins, jars, packets and paper bags that we refill and record them as a combined figure.  The only thing we don’t count towards our refill total is flour and this is because flour would normally be sold in a paper bag.  Although we’ve been refilling for the past eight years, our 27,000 total only relates to the past 3 year period.  In reality, this number will be significantly higher (in fact, we’re pretty sure that we’ve already exceeded 30,000 refills!)

We spend a lot of time, thinking about and researching where our products come from, and if they don’t meet our exacting ethical standards, we don’t buy them.  Our household and health and beauty products are all made in the UK (some of them locally) from plant based eco-friendly ingredients.  Our loose food items are, where possible, fairtrade, organic or locally sourced.  We sell fresh organic produce in the summer months which is grown in the local area.  We also use several UK cooperatives who source the items we buy from ethical suppliers who use sustainable and eco-friendly farming methods.  Our gifts are also ethically produced from sustainable or recycled materials.

The Ethical Gift Shop & Refillery is listed on the refill.org.uk app as an official refill station.