Fuquay Spice and Tea

Website

503 Broad Street, Fuquay-Varina, NC 27526

Spice, tea, vinegar, and oil shop with BYOC for spices/teas and container reuse options for oil/vinegar.

This shop sells spices, teas, vinegars, and oils along with relevant accessories. The spices and teas are available in plastic bags of 1oz, but can also be placed in a container you bring (for a $1/oz discount on tea). The oils and vinegars are not available for bring-your-own-container due to unfortunate issues with customers bringing unsanitary containers, but can be returned so that the store can reuse them. A small plastic wrap that seals the top of the bottle is still discarded with each purchase, but the opportunity to reuse the bottle is still great.

Advice: For spices and teas, bring containers larger than a standard spice jar. You'll want to make sure the mouth of your container is wide enough to make filling it easy, and you want to ensure that even a vary lightweight spice/tea can still weigh at least 1oz when your container is full of it (they cannot charge for less than 1oz). You don't have to fill containers all the way, just request how many ounces you want.

Stick Boy Bread Company

Website

127 South Main Street, Fuquay-Varina, NC 27526

Bakery and coffeeshop with BYOC drink discounts and low-waste opions for pastries, breads, and granola.

Wonderful local bakery with great pastries and coffee. Staff are happy to put pastries into a container you bring (instead of paper bags, which are the default), and they provide a discount for bringing your own mug for coffee and similar beverages. Day-old bread is available in plastic bags, but fresh bread can go into a container you bring.

Fuquay Meat Market

Website

112 West Vance St, Fuquay-Varina, NC

Local grocery that happens to sell whole loofahs (great for compostable dish/cleaning sponges).

This local grocery sells dried loofahs. They can be a little tricky to find, so the best way is to pull up a picture of a dried loofah and show an employee. Last time Chris was there, the loofahs were tucked on top of a beverage refridgerator, and were about $6 each.

Pints Ice Cream & Beer

Website

512 Broad St, Fuquay-Varina, NC 27526-1708

Local ice cream shop with low-waste take-home pints of ice cream.

Pints makes their own ice cream with unique and creative flavors. You can get a pint of their ice cream in a pint-sized paper cup to take home, though it is currently unclear whether the paper cup is compostable/recyclable. It may have a plastic lining.

The Soap Bar

Website

48 N Broad Street. Angier, NC 27501

Shop selling soap, refillable BYOC cleaning supplies, and more.

The Soap Bar offers many locally-produced soaps and cleaning supplies, as well as a small selection of loose-leaf teas and home goods. You can refill your own containers of laundry and dishwashing detergent, as well as body care soaps.

Mindful Merchant

Website

2425 Kildaire Farm Rd, Suite 401, Cary, NC 27518-8423

Shop focused on low-waste home goods. Cleaning, kitchen, hygiene, and more.

Mindful Merchant carries low-waste products for kitchen, cleaning, bathroom, hygiene, laundry, and more. This one store covers all of your non-food bases quite well. Many of the products are locally made too!

Chatham Marketplace

Website

480 Hillsboro St, Pittsboro, NC 27312-9497

Local food co-op with bulk refillable dry goods, local fresh produce, glass bottle milk, and more.

This co-op fills the rare niche of providing low-waste food options. They offer a ton of produce (no/little packaging), bulk goods (sugar, flour, nuts, rice, beans, chickpeas, lentils, spices, herbs, teas, etc...), milk in glass bottles (using a $3/bottle deposit refunded when you return the bottle), and everything else you would expect from a small grocery (though there are products with plastic packaging in other sections).