Canary Refillery
Canary Refillery
WORDS BY TRAVIS KLEMP
PROFILE
A common scenario: you pick up a cleaning product or some extra-hold gel to properly form your frosted tips, and you’re stuck cutting open extra, heavy-duty plastic encasing it with scissors until complete frustration. Maybe not super common, and maybe frosted tips aren’t necessarily in-style, but you get the point. How do we reduce waste when virtually everything we buy from big box stores includes enough plastic to contain the product three times over?
In 2019, Lisa Watts and Tara Meyers opened Canary, a zero-waste shop in Calgary, AB., with one goal in mind: to carry quality home and body goods without the excessive packaging we see from so many companies. They want to make a zero-waste lifestyle enjoyable and easy.
At Canary you can bring your own containers with you to refill cleaners, soaps and personal care products without all of the additional waste and with reusable containers. They offer an impressive selection of low impact lifestyle items that are sustainably sourced alternatives to plastic and single-use products.
Meyers and Watts have given Calgary an option to purchase local, sustainable, products without the guilt or concern that we get from ordering from somewhere like Amazon – you know, where you order a USB drive and get enough non-recyclable packaging to fill your home?
Not to pile on the obvious underdog that is Amazon and billionaire Bezos, but a report from Oceana, a network of organizations working exclusively to protect and restore the oceans on a global scale, have released some pretty alarming numbers surrounding plastic waste from the next-day delivery giants.
“[Oceana] found that Amazon generated 211 million kilograms of plastic packaging waste last year [2019]. This is comprised of the air pillows, bubble wrap and other plastic packaging items added to the approximately seven billion Amazon packages delivered in 2019, according to news accounts. The report found that Amazon’s estimated plastic packaging waste, in the form of air pillows alone, would circle the Earth more than 500 times.”
And this type of knowledge seems super common doesn’t it? We hear all the time about the damaging relationship companies like Amazon have with their employees, with the earth, with the cities they are based in, but yet so many of us still choose them. Maybe it's because people can turn a blind eye in the name of convenience, sure. But I think, for many, it is the lack of choice out there for alternatives that are better for our earth.
And this is exactly what Canary has built in their short time in Calgary. They have created a space that is friendly and non-judgemental, that caters to all lifestyles and provides a wide spectrum of choice. And that’s the hope; that we have options to choose from when it comes to household products that aren’t harmful to the land or water that surrounds us.
“We wanted to inspire change rather than guilt people into anything," said Meyers and Watts.
A huge part of the change they are referring to is plastic and the chaos it produces on the environment.
Plastic is a major source of pollution and is devastating the world’s oceans. Recent studies estimated that 90 per cent of all seabirds and 52 per cent of all sea turtles have ingested plastic, which can often prove fatal. Reports have estimated that only nine per cent of all plastic ever produced has been recycled and 91 per cent has ended up in landfills, incinerated or in the environment, including the oceans.
Obviously, the largest impact on plastic pollution would be reducing the influence and stranglehold companies like Amazon have on our society, but it is not the only way. For Meyers and Watts, the approach to reversing or stopping this crisis comes from the community building they do through Canary and the network they have in Calgary.
“It’s important to be connected to people in your community that share similar values and support each other. The bulk of the companies we carry in the shop are Canadian (many from Calgary), and great examples of how small companies can prioritize the environment and deliver awesome products,” said the co-owners.
“We've been inspired by the idea that when lots of people make even small changes, together they have a big impact on the planet as well as the decisions that corporations or governments make - we have a lot of power as consumers to change things for the better,” they added.
Both Meyers and Watts have always had a strong relationship with their natural surroundings – hiking, camping, and spending time in the woods. In addition to their concern for plastic use, they share a deep respect for nature in general - specifically the role trees play in our ecosystem, not only as the lungs of our planet, but the homes they provide, the water and air they filter and the beauty they provide to our lives. This passion has also connected them to other partners in the city with shared interests.
“We partnered with Tree Era to plant trees because ultimately both of our missions align in creating a more sustainable, healthy world. We also support Plastic Free YYC, another non-profit in our community,” said Meyers.
Canary has been growing constantly and gaining popularity since 2019. With so much disruption in the world right now, waste continues to show up in unique, new, and damaging ways. Canary’s future is bright, and they will be in Calgary as long as people support a shift to zero-waste. But the exact direction of the business is unknown, as is the case with so many small businesses in 2020-2021.
“Although the economy is being pushed to it’s limits, we also realize that the issue of waste is worse now in the pandemic then ever before and so we have many challenges ahead of us,” said Meyers and Watts.
Ahead lies a precarious and uncertain road for Canary, as is the case for many of us. But their contribution to the zero-waste community, the environmental and sustainability community, and the community of Calgary in general is huge and will hopefully continue to grow.
For more on Canary visit their website.
