For Alyssa McKeon and her husband, Luke Simon, their eco-friendly and sustainable store is one small way of contributing to the fight against climate change.

Witching Hour Provisions in Hopkinton opened its doors to the community in December 2021. The store is a refill station and coffee roastery. Customers can bring in their own containers to refill dish soap, hand soap, laundry detergent and personal care products that generate single-use plastics.

Until they moved to Hopkinton from Salem, Massachusetts, in 2018, the couple had never considered being environmentally conscious. They didn’t give much thought to the waste they were generating after tossing it away in the bin. But in small towns like Hopkinton, residents are responsible for transporting their waste to the dump.

Every month, they drove up to the transfer station with a car full of trash. It slowly dawned on them the amount of waste they were generating. McKeon became aware of how many plastic shampoo, conditioner, and detergent containers accumulate in landfills.

They decided to switch to sustainable alternatives and began restocking their supplies at a refill store 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 very own refill station in Hopkinton.

“Our belief is that every community should have a refill station just like every community should have a coffee shop,” said McKeon.

Bags of home-roasted coffee line the shelves along the back wall of the store, and almost no customer leaves without purchasing one. Their coffee is packaged in compostable bags that decompose in six months in a household compost.

Just like their coffee bags, each product in the store is carefully selected to reduce its carbon footprint and is an extension of the tagline “Reuse, Refill, Rethink” painted on the store’s front window.

McKeon and Simon ensure their store’s products meet at least one of the following criteria – it’s eco-friendly, made in the U.S., or owned by women.

The curated product line makes it easier to switch to sustainable alternatives for Hopkinton residents like Victoria Bram, who gets most of her cleaning supplies from the store. She said the store makes the selection simple and straightforward and she feels confident that the products they carry are made with clean and safe ingredients.

Almost everything on the store shelves has been upcycled 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 plantable seeds. But dryer balls, toilet cleaning tabs and dishwashing pods 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 with Walmart or Target, they only bring in products that are affordable and not exorbitantly priced.

“I think there is an assumption that being environmentally friendly is very expensive,” said McKeon.

Bram refills her maple syrup jug with lavender-scented laundry detergent and likes that she can buy the quantity she needs rather than the standard quantity that brands in supermarkets compel you to buy.

A laundry detergent option available at the store is a bar of soap that can be cut into pieces and dissolves to fill many large containers. Bram said the bar might seem pricey, but it is not for the amount of product you can make from it.

“It’s like a front-loaded cost instead of a cost over time, ” said Bram. “It’s like you are using less concentrated stuff more frequently.”

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 to compost.

There are companies in the country that make plant-based packaging out of bagasse, bees wax, shells, and coconut husks, and the couple hopes that people will recognize that this is a lucrative business model that also benefits the earth.

Ever since McKeon started using eco-friendly products, her trips to the dump have reduced. She no longer takes a car full of trash.

She believes that “sustainable is local, and local is sustainable” and she urges people to shop for sustainable products from small businesses to push large manufacturers to make the change.

“I do not believe it’s on one individual to change society,” said McKeon. “But I do believe we can vote with our dollars.”

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