We recently connected with Teresa Sanders and have shared our conversation below.

Teresa, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

In 2018 my life was changed by a Facebook post that led me down a rabbit hole and that rabbit hole is the dismal rates of recycling. I thought I was doing my part for the environment only to feel bamboozled to find out that only 9% of plastic worldwide is actually recycled. I was dedicated to my recycling and couldn’t believe that the majority of what goes in our blue bins isn’t recycled.

This rabbit hole led to more facts about plastic that were horrifying: plastic never goes away and there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by the year 2050. There had to be a better way than continuously purchasing new plastic containers and contributing to the problem that is clearly worsening with our increased reliance on plastic. This is were the I began my journey to open a refillery in my home town of Vernon, BC.

I decided to leave my 20 year career as a dietitian to jump into the ecopreneur life and open a refillery. I attended business classes at my local Community Futures and entered a business pitch competition called the Enterprize Challenge. It is Vernon’s own Dragon’s Den style competition and I was fortunate enough to win the competition and receive amazing supports from our local business. These included radio and newspaper advertising, lawyer services, accounting services, banking fees and a cash prize that helped in the opening of FILL. When FILL opened, it opened with an absolute rocket launch due to all the publicity and advertising that this competition offered, as well as having an amazing community that was supportive of transitioning to a more green and plastic free lifestyle. Within its first week, FILL customers had saved over 3,000 plastic containers from entering the environment. Way to go FILLERS!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

At FILL, you can come and ‘fill’ your cleaning and hygiene products using your existing containers to prevent new plastic containers from being purchased from the conventional stores. We offer high quality, organic and plant based products from Indigenous, local and Canadian suppliers. These products offer clean ingredients to help protect our customers and waters from harmful and toxic ingredients found in conventional products. Our customers LOVE how our products perform and it is shown with an over 80% return customer rate. We often hear customers boast that they don’t have to recycle near as much as they used to due to the ability to refill their containers, such as laundry soap, dish soap, shampoos, face care and personal hygiene products. To date FILL stores have saved over 300,000 plastic containers from entering the environment. This number gives me goosebumps every time I update it! I am so proud of how our communities have come together.

Eleven months after the first FILL opened, the second location opened in Kelowna in November of 2020. Despite the pandemic, our communities were ready to ditch single use plastic and look for more environmentally friendly products. FILL has also become a franchise in BC with an approach of putting the environment, the franchisees and the community as the priorities. We look forward to bringing more FILL stores to other communities in BC to help kick the plastic habit.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Right before the first FILL opened in Vernon, I started to realize that our community was getting super excited about the store from social media comments, rapid growth of the social media following and a pop-up shop we attended at a local Eco Fare. This was going to be BIG! I had to hire more staff and do it quickly. Opening day was December 3 and we were heading into the Holiday Season with everyone shopping.

I hired this gal for weekends in December to help with the holiday rush with no promise of anything beyond December. We started her training and quickly became fans of Gabi. She had the same passion for the earth, was so keen on everything we did, came with some great ideas and it was clear that she needed to become a regular on our team. She became a full-time staff member in January of 2020 and by May of 2020 we were already discussing expanding the plastic savings to the Kelowna area. We became business partners on the second location and she continues to be an asset to FILL to this day!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

I was fortunate to have access to multiple funding sources at the time of FILL’s start-up. I was able to contribute my own money, as well as access loans through an Aboriginal Financial Institute and qualified for government grants. For FILL’s second location, there was access to funds through Shopify lending, as well as personal money. Everything has been quite easy and fallen into place; I am incredibly grateful for this, as finances can be so stressful. Although I had to wait a long time for the grants to come through (delayed 4 months) it was well worth the wait to get to the point where we could help protect the earth.

Contact Info:

• Website: fillvernon.ca
• Instagram: @fillvernonsrefillstore
• Linkedin: Teresa Sanders