Making sustainability fun: Popular zero-waste store expands to West Oahu

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) - A zero-waste store focused on changing the tides of plastic pollution is expanding to West Oahu.

Keep It Simple, a business built on the concept of a low-waste, sustainable lifestyle opened their third location at Kamakana Alii Kapolei Saturday morning.

Their other two locations are in Kaimuki and Waikiki.

You bring in a container fill it up with everyday essentials like laundry detergent, body wash and hand soap.

“Now I don’t have to drive as far, all the way into town,” said Gena Balboa of Kapolei. “And I can switch over a lot of more of my products to zero waste so I’m very excited about that.”

“People from the west side, were driving over like almost every day and saying like, hey, like we really need you to open one closer,” said Co-Owner of Keep it Simple, Hunter Long. “So that was really the driving force behind us wanting to look on the internet and find a space available.”

The demand from the west side comes as no surprise to Zero Waste Oahu’s Co-Founder and Executive Director Nicole Chatterson.

She said they’re excited to see more re-fill stations expanding to other parts of the island.

“Right now, the west side is bearing all of the burden of our waste management,” said Chatterson. “And I think as everyday consumers, we have a responsibility to think about consuming less, because what that means right now is we’re just shoving it into somebody else’s backyard when we buy products that we use once.”

“This is like a huge progress and helping that by not letting all that stuff back into our oceans,” said Philip Maher of Kapolei. “So, step by step.”

The 55-gallon barrels the soaps are shipped in are repurposed.

Keep it Simple Co-Owner Jillian Corn added that they give repurposed plastic bottles to the community.

“So, imagine 500 plastic bottles in one location, that is huge,” said Corn. “And then we give those to our community for like farms for water, catchments, all those kinds of things.

Since Keep It Simple’s first shop opened two years ago, over 20,000 bottles have been re-filled.

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