Green Haven ups its eco-game with new Refill Shop

Uptown’s Green Haven Living is taking its eco-friendly game up another notch, with the opening of a “Refill Shop” within its store on Saturday, July 23.

For the seriously environmentally concerned, the cozy little shop – located in an historic Uptown building at 20 W. Main St. – already is one of the coolest destinations in town.

Whether you’re looking for a neat gift for someone special, or really working to lessen the footprint of your personal impact on the planet, Green Haven Living is packed with options.

“Everything here is sustainable or eco-friendly,” says shop owner Angie Scheu. The shop’s website describes it succinctly: “Sustainable + Eco-Friendly + Zero Waste,” reads the headline, followed with a sort of mission statement: “Thoughtfully curated inspiration for your journey to live and give more sustainably.”

Products in the store are nontoxic, sustainable, and where possible, locally sourced – from body and hand soap, to glass cleaner and dishwasher gel, to flea repellent for dogs and fizzy toilet bombs that remove stains from ceramics.

The packaging is reusable or recyclable. And that’s where the new Refill Shop within Green Haven comes in. 

Another trim of the waste stream
Customers can now bring back their empty bottles of eco-friendly shampoo or face wash and have them refilled. Reuse cuts a whole side off the recycling triangle, or trims the stream of single-use containers entering the waste stream. If you walk in without a container, you can head over to the super cool “Jar Bar” to find a suitable, reusable vessel for just about any product in the store.

In either case, you then head to the Filljoy digital scale to weigh the empty container, and obtain a tag that will list the container’s “tare weight” – otherwise known as the unladen weight. 

Then visit to the carboys or other large containers full of product, fill up your container, and return to the checkout counter. A second scale weighs the filled container, subtracts the tare weight and produces a second tag to charge just for the product in the vessel.

Scheu says a majority of the refillable products are sourced locally (in Ohio), from makers whose values align with Green Haven Living's environmentally friendly ethos. 

In step with the mission
The refill service is just the latest eco-step for Green Haven Living, which has become an Uptown Westerville community hub for those who are serious about sustainability. Since opening in its first location at 12 W. College in 2018, the store has prided itself on being a destination for unique, thoughtfully made gifts and home goods. Think upcycled, reclaimed, and vintage-made-new items.  

Scheu said she set out from the start to prove everyday products could be designed and made in a more eco-friendly way by offering those alternatives in the store. But the small business has evolved and expanded since those early days. Following a three-month closure during the pandemic, during which “free front porch delivery” kept the business going, it opened in August 2020 at 20 W. Main, in the space formerly occupied by the Westerville Visitors Bureau.

Bags to benches, electronics recycling
Other services available at Green Haven Living include recycling drop-off programs. 

Green Haven Living has been the primary drop-off point for the Plastic Recycling Program started by the Westerville Lions Club in the spring of 2021. Every 500 pounds of collected plastic grocery bags or other film plastic nets a nifty recycled plastic bench. Six of the benches now grace the Uptown streetscape, including one outside Green Haven Living, two at Barrel & Boar, one at the J. Carmen Salon, and two at Middlefield Bank.

In June of 2022, Green Haven Living launched an electronics recycling drop-off program in collaboration with TDR Total Computer Recyclers, based in Pataskala. More details, with a list of accepted items (including cables and cords, lithium batteries, computer components and much more), are available at greenhavenliving.org.

Refill Party to open Refill Shop
​The refill shop at Green Haven Living is being introduced Saturday, July 23, during a Refill Party. The store will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the public is invited to learn more about the refillable products and service.