Frequently Asked Questions

Absolutely! That is one of the main reasons we are here! You are welcome to bring in any containers—jars, bags, tins, whatever works for you – for your own personal refills. There’s a self-weigh station right by the front door, so you can easily weigh your containers before filling. That way, we can subtract the tare weight at checkout.

Bringing in your own containers to fill is the lowest footprint option, and we want to reward these efforts the most. When you bring in at least one container to fill with any product (e.g., “please fill oats in here”, or “I put hand soap HW1 in this soap dispenser from home”), you will receive an extra Earthie™ 🌍 for your visit.  Once you accrue 10 Earthies™ 🌍, you can take 10% off your transaction. 20 Earthies™ 🌍 = 20% off. So it pays to bring your own!

To help keep your products fresh and safe, we do recommend that your containers be clean and completely dry. A little moisture can sometimes lead to mold or bacteria growth, and nobody wants that. So give those jars a quick check before heading in. We appreciate it—and so will your refills!

When we first opened in 2019, we had a very conservative policy for food refills that included an extra sanitation step before filling a container from home. But that hasn’t been a requirement here for a while (despite some information regarding that still showing up online)! We use a clean funnel to protect our utensils from any cross-contamination from customer containers to our products while filling and implement a lot of measures to keep everything sanitary, including only allowing employees to handle the bulk food.

We are working on building out more details on our refill process here (coming soon…)

We have sanitized donated containers and 100% recycled brown paper bags available to use so you can easily participate in the reuse and refill process. We also have some special containers for sale that could be your new “forever container”, but buying new containers is not required, and we want to be sure that is never a requirement here!

Yes! We happily accept clean and “truly reusable” glass containers for customer REUSE. Much of our labor to keep this operation going goes into sorting, soaking, sanitizing (in our ultra-efficient high temperature commercial dishwasher), air-drying (code requires containers be air dried and not towel-dried), matching lids back to containers, weighing for tare, and storing these reusable containers for your use. We are so proud of this effort and believe it is one of the most powerful things we are doing to help lower the communities waste and ecological footprint. But – we need your help to make sure this is done in the most efficient way possible.

When you are gathering your containers for donation to us, please think of it as a gift and not an alternative to recycling. Many times, it’s the plastic lining on the underside of the lid that retains odors either from salsa or pickles. Even though the glass itself can be easily cleaned out, that lining just continues to release odors over time that prevent true reuse of the whole container. Would you be comfortable putting anything in that container, from hand soap to peanut butter? If not, then it is probably not a good candidate for us to reuse. We recommend creating a “reusables” bin in your home next to your recycling bins so you can sort as you go.

Most of our refillable grocery items are certified organic, unless specifically labeled “conventional” or “local.” When you see “local” marked on our dry goods (like herbs), it means we dried them in-house from fresh herbs picked at peak flavor. They may come from certified organic farms, regenerative local partners, or even from our own garden right here on the property.

We purchase fresh, “ultra-seasonal” produce from local farms at a price they set. Some may be surprised how much local produce continues to be available outside of the farmers market months.

We prioritize sourcing from no-spray or chemical-free farms, but not all are certified organic. Our goal is to support small-scale growers who use thoughtful, responsible practices, but may still be working toward certification. We’re proud to stand behind and support their hard work, and you’ll always see the farm source listed on each item either in the produce menu, on the price tags in store, or in the online catalog here.

Some produce comes directly from individual farms, while others are delivered through trusted farm partnerships that consolidate orders at a shared hub before making the trip to Omaha. This coordinated system reduces redundant transport and helps lower the carbon footprint of each delivery.

Many of our growers deliver in reusable bins to support our closed-loop, plastic-free values, and we actively encourage this approach whenever possible. As we continue to grow and evolve, we hope to identify new, innovative ways to continue to make this process more efficient.

With six years of experience, we’ve fine-tuned our ordering based on what our customers actually buy. It’s always a work in progress, but it helps us reduce waste while keeping things fresh and seasonal.

What doesn’t sell fresh is often preserved in-house by freezing or dehydrating so that in those starker winter months it is still possible to eat local.

Our sourcing reflects our values: supporting local growers, reducing food miles, minimizing packaging waste, and helping to build a more sustainable food system.

Most of our bulk dry goods arrive in large 25 to 50 lb paper bags, which significantly reduces the need for single-use retail packaging. While closed-loop systems for food are still developing, we do have a few regional food partners, like Fat Head Honey and Great River Maple, who deliver their products in refillable five-gallon buckets—which we return for reuse. We’re always on the lookout for more partners willing to take part in systems like these.

For culinary herbs and herbal teas, we source fresh from local growers whenever possible, including our own on-site garden. This allows us to skip the packaging entirely and dry many of the items in-house.

Some specialty herbal ingredients and spices do still arrive in plastic bags, but we responsibly recycle those through the local orange bag program. We’re also transitioning our sourcing to vendors who share our zero-waste goals. New partners like Pinch Spice (for certified organic bulk spices) and Ayala Tea (for regenerative organic teas) provide their products in fully compostable packaging, and we’re excited to move more of our supply over to vendors like these that further support our mission.

We also make many of our spice and tea blends in-house, including grinding whole spices fresh on-demand, which helps reduce the need for prepackaged items and lets us control quality, freshness, and packaging impact at the same time.

Our biggest remaining source of plastic waste comes from bulk oils and vinegars, which are typically shipped in large food-safe plastic jugs. We offer these empty containers to the community for reuse where possible, and recycle them as a last resort. We’d love to see a closed-loop oil and vinegar supplier serving our region in the future – maybe we’ll find a way to make it happen ourselves (who knows what the future holds? 🙂 ).

Exist Green is a gluten-free facility. Some products may be packed in facilities that also handle wheat, but none contain gluten ingredients. We are careful to include a caution next to the products that have been processed by or grown alongside wheat.

As of March 4, 2026 – yes! We do accept SNAP (EBT) as a form of payment on eligible products when purchasing in-store at our brick and mortar location. We may expand our ability to also accept SNAP on the website, but that is an additional application process.

For the refill station, we only make a few limited products in-house, identified by our brand and the housemade label. We’re very intentional about the items we choose to carry at our refill station, and we make sure our maker-partners meet our strict standards for sustainability and ingredient integrity.

Leigh, our owner, has a background in environmental engineering, which brings a chemistry-informed lens to product selection. This helps us see through greenwashing and evaluate ingredients more critically. We follow the precautionary principle, choosing to avoid questionable ingredients rather than rely solely on outside organizations to determine safety. There’s always room to learn more, but we aim to make the most informed choices we can.

All of our refill products are made with organic, plant-based (vegan) ingredients and are free from palm oil and petroleum derivatives. We prioritize simple, effective formulations that work well, so you don’t have to compromise on performance to make a sustainable swap.

Each bulk container in the shop is labeled with a full ingredient list, and we offer a take-home ingredient card library if you’d like to bring one home with your refill. Ingredients are also listed in our online catalog.

We focus on concentrated liquids to reduce the carbon footprint of our sourcing and avoid shipping excess water. Watered-down products often require preservatives, but by skipping the water, we skip the unnecessary additives too. All scented products use only essential oils or botanical extracts, never synthetic fragrance.

Whenever possible, our liquids are sourced through closed-loop systems. Vendors take back the empty bulk containers and refill them at the point of production. This means no single-use packaging is used during the main stages of the supply chain: from their hands to ours, and then to yours.

Yes – ensuring you are happy with your purchase helps us reduce wasteful consumption. Refer to our return policy for more information.

PFAS (“forever chemicals”) are a large family of synthetic compounds used to make products non-stick, waterproof, or stain-resistant. They’re now so widespread that trace amounts can be found almost everywhere—in air, soil, and water, and even in industrial equipment used to make consumer goods.

At Exist Green, we do not allow intentionally added PFAS in any formulas we carry. Because PFAS can sometimes appear through manufacturing equipment or packaging coatings, we focus on brands that use simple, minimally processed ingredients and transparent supply chains.
Compared to heavily processed commercial products, we’re confident our selections remain extremely low in PFAS exposure risk.

One recent discovery we’re acting on:
many stainless-steel razor blades (including some marketed as sustainable) use a microscopic Teflon (PTFE) coating on the blade edge to reduce friction. We were disappointed to learn this and are working on phasing these blades out. Albatross blades are the only ones that are do not contain Teflon on the razor edge. Albatross blades are completely PFAS-free, recyclable through their Take-Back Program, and support real reuse through their Take-Back Ware initiative.

🌿 Exist Green’s stance:
We define “PFAS-free” as no intentionally added fluorinated ingredients, while recognizing that trace PFAS exist in the global environment.
We’re committed to constant improvement, transparency, and proactive elimination of PFAS anywhere they appear in the supply chain.

Palm oil is a complex topic. It’s an incredibly efficient crop for producing plant oils, but the way it’s typically grown has caused massive deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and widespread habitat destruction in tropical regions. Much of the world’s palm oil comes from monoculture plantations that displace rainforests and endangered species like orangutans.

Many brands claim to use RSPO-certified (sustainably sourced) palm oil, but the certification is voluntary and notoriously difficult to verify. In practice, palm oil from deforested regions is often mixed with “certified” batches, making traceability murky. There’s little third-party oversight to ensure that environmental and labor standards are actually being followed.

Some argue that because palm oil is such an efficient crop, replacing it entirely with other oils (like soy, sunflower, or coconut) could shift the problem elsewhere. That may be true on a global scale, but as a small business, we choose to minimize demand for an ingredient tied to large-scale ecological harm until true transparency exists in its supply chain.

So, for now, we challenge our sourcing to be palm-oil free. This helps us support smaller producers, diversify agricultural systems, and avoid hidden petrochemical or industrial processing steps common in palm-based surfactants.

We also lean on the EU’s stricter ingredient standards – the European Union restricts hundreds (if not thousands) more cosmetic and household chemical ingredients than the U.S.- as a general guide for what we consider safer and more sustainable.

We do make one exception: Elate Mascara contains RSPO palm oil. We continue to carry it because it performs exceptionally well (it doesn’t run or smudge), and it’s part of a reuse model with a glass vial and silicone wand. We’re always searching for alternatives, but at this time, it remains the most sustainable, high-performance mascara we’ve found.

All shipped orders are plastic-free and packed with care using reused boxes and packaging materials from our vendor shipments whenever possible.

• Dry goods are packed in 100% recycled brown kraft paper bags.
• Liquids are packed in reused, donated, and sanitized containers (glass, tin, or aluminum).

If you prefer new containers, please add them from our Containers & Bags category before checkout. If you need help selecting the right container, feel free to reach out.

We encourage you to reuse what you can, or recycle or compost the rest responsibly. Shipping is free on orders over $50.

We offer free local delivery on orders over $50 within our delivery area. Deliveries go out Wednesday 9–11 AM and Saturday 8–10 AM.

• Order by Tuesday 5 PM for Wednesday delivery.
• Order by Friday 5 PM for Saturday delivery.

Your cart and checkout banner will always show the next available delivery window and its cutoff.

Most local deliveries are packed using donated and sanitized jars or reused brown paper bags. If you prefer your dry goods packed in our 100% recycled kraft paper bags, please note that in your Order Notes at checkout. Liquids are always packed in donated or returned jars.

We also offer an optional refill at your door program. If you have found your forever containers, place them outside before delivery and we will refill them directly into your jars or bottles. We transport and return your items in sanitized reusable cloth bags and, when needed, sanitized glass containers, with clear labels so everything comes back organized.

If you have not found your forever container yet, explore our Containers & Bags options to choose a style you will love to reuse.

We are building a broader container exchange system, including a “keep your pump, exchange a clean bottle” model. This will allow us to sanitize returned bottles and keep them in circulation as part of a closed-loop system.

We will usually notify you the morning of delivery when we are on our way. Once your order has been dropped off, we will set it outside your home or building and send a quick message confirming that it has been delivered.

If you live in a secured apartment complex or prefer that your delivery not be left outside, please note how you would like to receive your order in the Order Notes at checkout so we can accommodate your request.

Yes, we do! We noticed there weren’t any local options for natural cork recycling, so we stepped in to fill the gap. We’ve partnered with ReCORK, a program that gives used corks a second life by turning them into useful products like sustainable shoe soles and other plastic-free materials. Since we cover the shipping costs ourselves, we suggest a $1 per pound donation to help us keep the program going. Every bit helps us offer this service to the community.

No single-use packaging is used to get the product from the vendor to us (the manufacturer even refills their bulk containers), cutting waste on two major steps of the supply chain.

4914 Underwood Ave, Omaha, NE 68132 — in the Dundee neighborhood in Midtown.

Of course we are always happy to answer questions in person, or you can give us a call at 402-502-0880 during business hours. We also will respond to emails sent to [email protected].