As the temperature warms, are you thinking about spring planting? Is your sunscreen current? Do mosquitoes pester you?
Thinking about a ‘green’ answer to all those questions is easy, thanks to Gaia’s Market & Refillery in Homewood. Store owner Sarah Tozer has added new and seasonal products to her refillery, and she’s collecting empty planting pots for a friend.
Now’s the time to dig in the dirt and get the flowers and vegetables planted. Once your garden is beautiful, don’t throw away the containers your plants came in. Gaia’s is collecting them for a recycling and sharing project with Gather & Moss, a local gardening business.
As the temperature rises, the sun’s rays will starting beating down on us. Tozer has all-natural sunscreen that is “zinc based and has raspberry seed oil, which is a natural SPF. It’s fully 25-SPF certified,” she said. Gaia’s has tube formula and portions in glass pots.
Bothered by mosquitoes? Repellent comes in the form of an incense, a candle and a balm to rub on. Gaia’s also has an after-bite to sooth away the itching.
Since the store opened at 1948 Ridge Road in 2022, the customer base has been growing.
Travis Adams of Flossmoor stopped in for coffee filters and a soap refill. His family regularly uses the refillery for dish washing and hand soaps, compostable lunch bags and other storage containers “just because we know that going through that stuff on a regular basis we make a pretty big impact on the environment, and we want to do our best to leave as little a footprint in that regard.”
Jennifer Burke of Flossmoor came into the store for her compost bucket and happened upon a presentation of a new hair soap and conditioner products by DIP.
“I’m curious because I trust the brands (at Gaia’s). I’m also curious about using the bar instead of the liquid shampoo or conditioner,” Burke said.
Kate Assaraf, founder of DIP, was at Gaia’s to introduce the DIP products. She chose “the bars to be plastic free.” The fragranced bar sizes are .75- and 3-ounces that lather up and last longer than a bottle of shampoo, she said. “That was my goal – softserv sustainable hair care in a different way.”
DIP was making a donation to Great Lakes Great Responsibility, a nonprofit working to clean up the Great Lakes.
