WIMBERLEY — A Wimberley couple is opening a new business that is all about creating an environmentally friendly and cost-effective sustainable alternative to traditional household cleaners and personal hygiene products.
Hailey and Christopher Clark, who own local Fair Dinkum Coffee Shop, are now opening The Wimberley Refillery at the beginning of next month with the goal to limit single-use plastics. The duo will be selling everything someone may need in the household cleaner and personal hygiene realm, so that customers can bring their clean and dry containers from home, fill them up to their desired level at the store and pay by the ounce.
The idea for The Wimberley Refillery sparked when Hailey started to look around and realize the heightened amount of litter and over-consumerism.
“There’s so much of it. I think that in today’s day and age, we’re really seeing a lot of over-consumerism and it’s kind of heightened right now with TikTok and TikTok Shop and all of the different types of things people are getting into. I think that those things are great, but I think that over-consumerism is a real problem. As a result, we’re just filling these landfills full of more and more trash, more and more plastics. We’re consuming microplastics every day,” she explained. “It’s not healthy. It takes so long for these types of plastics to be done away with completely — years and years and years … Just ourselves, I have a family of four. Me and my husband, we have two children. Just going back and forth to the grocery store after I unbox everything and put everything away, plastic, even when it comes off of our food, I just think it’s astounding. It’s just so much garbage. Eventually, we’re going to run out of space for all of our trash.”
Small changes like reusing containers instead of buying new every time could make a big difference and diminish trash in the community, according to Hailey. She currently buys eco-conscious and environmentally-friendly products for her home, but she is looking to start refilling, as her business model entails, alongside other members of the Wimberley community.
“I don’t currently refill. So, that’s something that I was looking at getting into myself. I actually visited a local refillary in San Marcos that has a similar concept and I was like, ‘Wow, this is really neat. This is really new age. This could really make a difference.’ That thought kind of just grew from there,” Hailey explained. “While we buy eco-conscious products, I don’t buy refillable products currently. Obviously, I’ll be moving that direction in the near future, hopefully with a lot of other people.”
In her day-to-day life, Hailey has also started to become more conscious about what she has been putting in her body in an effort to curb symptoms of what she believes to be perimenopause. Recommended by her sister-in-law, Ashley, she has been using an app, titled “Yuka,” that allows her to scan the barcodes of all of the foods and other products she looks to buy at the store to understand the ingredients listed.
“It basically pulls up the information and lists all of the negative things that are in it — if there’s any like Red 40 or if there’s any known carcinogens in it. It was alarming to me how much both food and household consumables that we brought home that are just really bad for you with known carcinogens that cause cancer and so, that kind of spurred this along, too. I started scanning all of our products, finding that there were all of these ingredients in there and sometimes … there’s just not enough research yet done on something where you don’t know if it’s actually terrible for you,” she explained. “With the different ingredients that go into so much of what we use in our everyday lives, I was ignorant to it. Once I was a little bit more enlightened and my mind opened, I really was like, ‘Wow, this is really a problem’ … I think it’s become really important to me to really clean it all up.”
Once opened on Nov. 1, The Wimberley Refillery will focus on household cleaning and personal hygiene items to begin with. This includes, but is not limited to, sugar scrub, jojoba oil, natural deodorant balms, natural shampoo/conditioner, skin serum, lotion and toothpaste tablets. Also, everything the shop will be stocking does not have chemicals or preservatives; the products will be fragrance free with the option to purchase essential oils to add a scent, Hailey explained.
In the future, the couple is looking at expanding the range of products to add in bulk nuts, herbs, spices, olive oil, etc.
The Wimberley Refillery, located at 13620 Ranch Road 12, Suite A, will be open Tuesday-Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Stay up-to-date on the business at bit.ly/3Y2qofH.
