(ABOVE) Lori Mallini at Protea Zero Waste store in Kailua, where you can keep your plastic containers out of the landfill by refilling them with all-natural household and personal care products.
"This shouldn't be thrown away," she recalls thinking before tossing the perfectly good plastic container into a recycling bin. "It's going to be here over five hundred years from now. And then I thought about how many people are doing this every day."
Mallini knew that if she wanted to reduce her plastic consumption, others did too, but felt equally lost as to how. "We don't have any other options," she says. "We can recycle, but no one feels really great about that."
At the time, Mallini, who had majored in environmental studies at Hawaii Pacific University, was working in policy. While the work was worthwhile, going to the Capitol every day felt "soul-sucking," she says. Not only that, change came at a snail's pace—if ever. She wanted concrete action, and so Protea Zero Waste was born. When Mallini opened the shop in the Windward Oahu town of Kailua in 2020, it was the first refill store in the state.
Face oil made in-house at Protea.
Inside, the white walls, wood accents and botanical scents evoke the atmosphere of a day spa. People come from all over Oahu carrying empty containers, wine bottles and plastic soap dispensers and fill them with any of the dozens of all-natural household and personal care products lining the walls. Almost all of which—99 percent, Mallini says—come from female-owned businesses, and 60 percent are locally made.
Some items don't require containers, including shampoo bars (for people and pets), laundry detergent sheets and sorbet-hued handmade soaps. Toothpaste tabs offer a novel approach to dental hygiene: Chew one up, then brush. Mallini's favorite item is the face oil, formulated and made in-house at Protea.
Mallini recently added secondhand clothes to the shop, which has proved incredibly popular. For the new "drops," Mallini scouts thrift stores in Los Angeles and other big cities. She'll also buy back gently used garments from the community if they fit the Protea aesthetic—think boho sundresses, floral rompers, lots of linen and bold tropical prints.
Three years after opening, has Mallini realized the concrete change she was working for? She points to a sign on the wall: "Bottles Saved: 22,814"-the numbers and letters made from recycled plastic, of course.
