For Alyssa McKeon and her husband, Luke Simon, their eco-friendly and sustainable store is a small way to contribute to the fight against climate change.
Witching Hour Provisions in Hopkinton opened its doors to the community in December 2021. The shop is a coffee roasting and filling station. Customers can bring their own containers to refill dish soap, hand soap, laundry detergent and personal care products that produce single-use plastics.
Until they moved to Hopkinton from Salem, Massachusetts, in 2018, the couple had never considered being environmentally conscious. They didn’t think much about the waste they were generating after throwing it in the bin. But in small towns like Hopkinton, residents are responsible for hauling their own trash to the landfill.
Every month, they drove to the transfer station with a car full of garbage. Slowly the amount of waste they were generating was discovered. McKeon became aware of how much plastic shampoo, conditioner and detergent end up in landfills.
They decided to switch to sustainable alternatives and began replenishing their supplies at a filling shop in Concord rather than the supermarket. Making eco-friendly options a part of your life is difficult when you have to travel to another neighborhood. So they decided to open their own charging station in Hopkinton.
“Our belief is that every community should have a filling station just like every community should have a coffee shop,” McKeon said.
Bags of home-roasted coffee line the shelves along the back wall of the store, and almost no customer leaves without buying one. Their coffee is packaged in compostable bags that decompose in six months in a home compost.
Like their coffee bags, every product in the store is carefully selected to reduce its carbon footprint and is an extension of the “Reuse, Refill, Repair” tag painted on the store’s front window.
McKeon and Simon ensure that their store’s products meet at least one of the following criteria – being eco-friendly, made in the USA or women-owned.
The curated product line makes the transition to sustainable alternatives easier for Hopkinton residents like Victoria Bram, who gets most of her cleaning supplies from the store. She said the store makes choosing simple and straightforward, and she feels confident that the products they carry are made with clean and safe ingredients.
Almost everything on store shelves is recyclable or is recyclable or reusable. The store also sells eco-conscious gifts, like notebooks with covers made from old vinyl records and greeting cards with planted seeds. But dryer balls, toilet cleaning lamps and dishwashing covers are their most popular items.
When it comes to switching to sustainable products, many people are put off by the cost. McKeon said that while their prices may not be comparable to Walmart or Target, they only carry products that are affordable and not overpriced.
“I think there’s an assumption that being environmentally friendly is too expensive,” McKeon said.
Bram refills her maple syrup container with lavender-scented laundry detergent and loves that she can buy the amount she needs instead of the standard amount supermarket brands force you to buy.
An option for store-bought laundry detergent is a bar of soap that can be cut into pieces and dissolved to fill several large containers. Bram said the grass may seem expensive, but it’s not for the amount of product you can make from it.
“It’s like a cost loaded up front instead of a cost over time,” Bram said. “It’s like you’re using less concentrated stuff more often.”
McKeon intends to expand the product line to include specialty items such as floor cleaners and room sprays. The couple is also working with a company to develop a closed-loop program in which you can bring your materials to the store and they will return them to the manufacturer for composting.
There are companies in the country making plant-based packaging from bagasse, beeswax, husks and coconut husks, and the couple hopes people will realize this is a profitable business model that also benefits the earth.
Since McKeon started using environmentally friendly products, her trips to the landfill have decreased. She no longer takes a car full of trash.
She believes that “sustainability is local, and local is sustainable,” and she urges people to buy sustainable products from small businesses to encourage big manufacturers to make a difference.
“I don’t believe it’s up to an individual to change society,” McKeon said. “But I believe we can vote with our dollars.”
