Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lyndsey Gantert. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Lyndsey thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

Opening and running a zero waste store has come with many issues with it being a fairly new concept or business in the retail sense. One of them being the amount of waste that comes from suppliers or distributors that are selling “eco-friendly, zero waste” products and navigating where to draw the line for the products we decide to carry and suppliers we decide to support. From the first moment of realizing this was going to be a hurdle, we reached out to each manufacturer first to confirm what kind of pre-retail packaging and shipping supplies would be used to transport the product to us. It turns a regular purchase ordering process into a much longer, much more involved process. This issue brings up the idea of “greenwashing” and how it isn’t just the company or product touting a product as eco-friendly when it isn’t, but extending that “greenwashing” to wrapping eco-friendly products in eco-harmful materials. It also brings up the difficult decision of which products to carry if there turns out to be no options without excess packaging. If there are 10 different companies that sell reusable produce bags but every single one of them comes in plastic packaging, do we not offer reusable produce bags at all or do we dig deeper to see which company is making more of an effort to reduce waste or have a bigger positive impact on the environment?

Second issue has come up as more of a personal one, still business related though. As a business that has a strong foundation of, “for the greater good” values, there are many people who reach out wanting to do good for their community and open a place just like the one we’ve created and are looking for guidance in every step of how to do that. Unfortunately for me, this means that most are looking to me to give out all the info for free on how I got started and made the business successful because it seems to be my duty to guide everyone who is interested in this concept due to the nature of the values fueling the idea. Of course I want there to be stores like this all over the country and the world, but it is also extremely time consuming and I am left with the feeling of guilt when I can’t take that time to pass on the knowledge I have acquired over the last 9 years. Being one of the first zero waste stores in the country puts us in a position to be a leader in the field and a lot of folks turn to us for help to start up, as in 10-15 inquiries per week. This can be overwhelming when it is still a tiny team of two running the entire back end of the business, keeping us going and providing all the services for our community here in Colorado. Helping all the motivated folks in other communities would be a full-time job in itself and is not currently possible, so this has weighed on me as the business owner for years and I am still trying to find a way to provide guidance and not stretch myself too thin so the stores that are already open can continue to operate efficiently and effectively for a successful future.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I am the founder and operator of ZERO market, a series of zero waste bulk refill stores in Colorado. The goal of ZERO market is to provide the community with a convenient way of shopping sustainably and creating less waste at home and in daily life. The goal of living completely zero waste is near impossible, unless you live off grid and are 100% self sufficient, but the idea of ZERO market is to help people work towards the goal of zero or as little as possible using all the resources we provide. From bulk refills to disposable alternatives, there are over 1,200 products to help everyone work towards their sustainable living goals. I was a teacher and mental health worker before coming up with the idea of a zero waste store and there were many roads that led me to where I am now. I am currently in Colorado and looking to expand into other regions as this concept grows with the awareness of folks trying to reduce their ecological impact.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I feel most small business owners can relate to this one, but the pandemic hit us hard. Being located inside two marketplaces placed us under the shutdown regulations of large spaces so we were greatly impacted by being closed for many months. I needed to restructure the business basically overnight to keep us going by offering delivery and curbside pickup. That was tricky being a refill store. It was a wild ride and turned out to be 3-4x the work for 20% of sales and then up to less than half of pre-covid sales.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process./

We are a store that encourages DIY and making anything you can at home that you cant find without wasteful packaging. Realizing a few years into this that a lot of folks would love to live a less wasteful life but didn’t have the time it takes to make their own products at home, we realized it was time to start manufacturing some of the most basic options for those folks. We started with deodorant and moved into more body care products as time went on and customers requested their most needed items that weren’t yet package-free accessible. We now produce over 20 products in store and have created a whole line out of it. These were so fun to create and tweak as time went on to what we now have as super effective and simple ingredient filled goodies. The best part of making these items in house is that we can keep the cost way down and pass that savings on to our customers. The hardest lesson learned along the way was where to find and access the proper equipment to make the process more efficient. We were using very very small batch methods for the longest time and it turns out that was costing us double, sometimes triple the amount of processing time which in turn made the cost higher. Starting something from scratch with the passion is wonderful, but basic knowledge and proper tools is a huge understatement when it comes to scaling and making things successful.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thezeromarket.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/thezeromarket
• Facebook: facebook.com/zerowastemarket