Letter From The Founder

As an eco-conscious person, have you noticed how much more time some of our eco-friendly actions take? Cleaning your travel mug every morning takes more time and forethought than just grabbing a paper cup from the coffee shop. Reusables also require more space. Next to my front door is a basket of label-free jars that I scrubbed clean, now waiting to be refilled. Well, that's a glimpse into what it's like to run a closed-loop store. Extra time, extra space, and extra cleaning are necessary.

I'm not behind the checkout counter as much these days. Instead, I'm three blocks away in our warehouse making sure the less glamorous tasks get done. At the Green Life warehouse, we sanitize your donations, screw thousands of tops on to jars and bottles, and move products from their 55-gallon drums to the 1-gallon bulk jars you dispense from. The amount of time our team spends sanitizing, cleaning, and cleaning some more is what it takes to stop relying on single-use plastics. While our team has to invest extra time and space into making this business truly closed-loop, that's only half the picture.

The other half is you. Each time you skip the convenient plastic bottle and take the time to clean and refill your lotion bottle, or scoop goopy deodorant into a tiny jar, you become part of this closed-loop system. This year, countless numbers of you took the extra time to refill, drop off your precious knitwear to be mended, or swing by every other week to drop off your compost. Thank you for going out of your way to care for the earth.

You, alongside the rest of our refilling community, have diverted...

115 Knit Items Through Our Knit Mending Program

1,572 Tubes of Lip Balm

1,788 Tea Bags

1,967 Jugs of Laundry Detergent

1,993 Tubes of Deodorant

2,277 Tubes of Toothpaste 

2,617 Bottles of Household Cleaners 

3,873 Bottles of Dish Detergent

6,000 lbs of Food Waste Through Our Compost Program

11,185 Bottles of Body & Hair Products

22,717 Rolls of Paper Towels

We forgot to weigh your holiday light donations, but trust us, it was a lot! This year's donation window will be open until January 28th.

2025 Highlights

We attended (and had a blast at) the PBS Garden and Green Living Expo. You can find us there again February 13th–15th.

We moved out of our shared warehouse into our very own space that is walking distance from the shop!

We reinvigorated the in-person side of Zero Waste Madison!

Leave a comment if you want to learn more about this very cool group of folks working to promote reuse, repair, and refill initiatives in Dane County.

We soft-launched a B2B program to help businesses operate sustainably.

If your business is interested in refilling or sustainable supplies, shoot us an email at hello@greenlifetradingco.com for more info!

We developed a really cool program for realtors that will be ready to launch soon!

Shoot us an email at hello@greenlifetradingco.com if you are or know a realtor and want to learn more.