Op-Ed: Starting 2025 with the mindset that every refill matters

There’s something about the clean slate as the final month is torn from the calendar that beckons us toward envisioning a new self in the new year. There is a pull to dust ourselves off as we rise from the crumbs of our holiday feasting and declare that something will change – has to change.

And every year, somewhere at the end of January, there is a collective sigh releasing the tension brought on by trying to be perfect, and we return to our comfortable zones. With a quiet nod to last year’s self, we start to second guess if things really needed to change. I mean look at all of these picture highlights where everything and everyone is beautiful.

With each sacrifice or small adjustment we make to our incorrigible habit, we are running on faith that any small steps we are making will actually add up to yield the desired result. It’s hard to keep going. It’s so personal and there’s no group effort to lose my weight. Wouldn’t that be amazing if for every calorie someone else avoided, you reaped the benefits? Or every time someone cleaned their house, the stacks of papers that clutter your mental and physical space sorted themselves?

Unfortunately, it does not work that way. We are individually responsible to work through what matters to our personal lives. However, collectively all of our choices and actions add up and affect our planet.

It’s really hard to see in a concrete way how choosing to buy one thing from a local maker or business without packaging, for example, impacts on the environment and local economy. The default response is often, “I’m just one person. What difference does it make?” We have to rely on trust that it does make a difference, and we’ve already proven to ourselves that it can be hard to choose trust when the temptation to satisfy a desire comes knocking.

A useful self-talk to engage in is “What is the next best thing that I can do now?” This line of thinking helps us align with our values and make choices that reflect what is important to our lives. It’s not about being perfect, but engaging in practices that come from this authentic question. And this question, by the way, takes into account a personal assessment of your bandwidth at the time of the asking. It is an endeavor to be honest with yourself in order to be successful on your path rather than trying to be perfect and ultimately feeling defeated.

Here is a numeric perspective for you to show how small individual acts contribute to a huge collective movement. In 2024, 3,687 dish soap bottles were diverted from the landfill by being refilled with nontoxic dish soap at Living Pantry. This is just one product and one year. Since opening in 2020, there have been 38,850 containers refilled with everything from toothpaste to laundry soap.

Those numbers are incredible, and they are the result of individuals like you making a choice to do something differently and trust that it makes a difference. Imagine the opposite: this many containers not saved. It’s staggering and proves that your actions, in combination with your community, make a difference. Thank you!

Sometimes in Living Pantry, a customer will apologize that they are “only” refilling their dish soap and remark that maybe they will start to refill shampoo, or something else, at some point. And I always respond that what they are doing is huge and it matters. I encourage people to be proud of the one refill they are choosing and to stay attentive to asking themselves the question of the next best thing.

With all of my heart, I believe and share that every refill matters.

Shawna co-owns Living Pantry in Blaine and Bellingham with her husband, Seppi. Together, they bring Whatcom County’s first refill-centric natural products store. For more information on how numbers are calculated, you can connect with them directly at the shop or reach out at connect@livingpantry.com.