How we pack your refill order

Some items on our website come from our refill inventory, not from standard manufacturer retail packaging.

That means your order may include a labeled recycled brown paper bag, a commercially sanitized donated jar, or a reused shipping box. That is intentional. It is part of refill grocery, where the goal is to reduce single-use packaging while still handling products carefully.

Exist Green is a full-service refill grocer. In our store, bulk food is kept behind the counter and portioned by trained staff using long-handled sanitized utensils, not scooped by customers from open bulk bins. Your online order is packed from that same refill inventory.

How refill items are handled

Food items

Food bulk is kept behind the counter and filled by trained staff. Customers do not self-serve from our food bulk containers.

When you order, a staff member portions your item using a freshly sanitized, long-handled utensil, such as a ladle or long-handled spoon. Each utensil is used once per product, then re-sanitized before it is used again. No shared scoops. No hands in the product. Everything is weighed on calibrated scales.

Personal care + cleaning refills

These live at our self-serve refill stations, but the product itself stays contained. Most are dispensed through enclosed pumps, so customers touch the pump handle, not the product. For anything that uses a scoop or ladle, the utensil is sanitized and dedicated to that one container.

How your items are packed

Dry refill items ship in a brand-new recycled brown paper bag, both compostable and recyclable, labeled with the product name and sealed for transit.

Liquids and items that need a sturdier container ship in a donated, commercially sanitized glass jar. We do not rely on home washing alone. Every donated jar runs through our commercial dishwasher’s high-temperature sanitation cycle, not chlorinated chemicals, before it goes back into circulation.

That is the same process we use for the community jar shelf in the store. For shipped orders, the jar is yours to keep, reuse, or pass on.

We also reuse clean shipping boxes and plastic-free cushioning from vendor shipments whenever we can. New shipping materials only come out when our reused stock runs out. This applies to both ecommerce shipments and local deliveries.

Labels, tape, and the insert card

We print shipping labels on recycled, unbleached printer paper instead of using traditional adhesive shipping labels. That cuts out the sticker-label backing waste and keeps a large plastic-and-paper sticker off your box. For newly packed shipments, we seal with plastic-free kraft paper tape, no plastic reinforcing threads.

One honest note: some reused vendor boxes may still have their original conventional tape from their first shipment. We do not remove that, because removing it adds waste of its own. So a reused box may not be entirely plastic-tape-free, but it has at least had a second life instead of going to landfill.

The little insert card you may find in your box is also printed on recycled, unbleached paper stock.

Your refill item is sealed inside its inner container, placed inside the shipping box, and packed for transit.

Why refill packaging looks different

Some refill items do not arrive in manufacturer packaging because they are filled by us from our refill inventory.

That may look different from a drugstore shelf or a standard ecommerce order. You may see a labeled recycled brown paper bag, a donated glass jar, or a shipping box that has already had a first life.

That does not mean the item was handled casually. It means the care is in the filling process, sanitation, labeling, and product itself, not in extra layers of disposable packaging.

Quick FAQ

Thanks for refilling ✨