What is Bare Necessities?

It all started when…

We were in Terra Organics cafe one morning, getting breakfast, and discussing the disgusting amount of single use plastic we get through each day. Having recently found out that up to 95% of baby wipes contain plastic, which truly surprised us, we felt we needed to start being more aware of what we were using and how to reduce our impact.

Whilst chatting, we commented that someone should open up a ‘Zero Waste’ store here in Wareham, Dorset. It seemed a perfect market for it, and having seen many walking around with re-usable bags etc recently, it seemed a shame there wasn’t one. So, with a bit of nudging from my children, we decided to start the venture ourselves!

After countless hours of research, scouting out other stores for hints and tips, and joining many Facebook groups to talk to other store owners, we were confident that Wareham needed a Zero Waste store.

So began the prep! We took over Unit 3, 10a South Street, and revamped the entire place. New flooring, paint, a new stock room and all new shop fit using used or reclaimed wood, wonderfully done by Joe Wright of Wright’s Creations.

After around 8 months, we were given the opportunity to move into the larger, two floor, shop next door. This gave us much more space and we reopened with the same vibe and feel in early May 2020.

Our store runs by these ethics:

No single use plastic is used to package goods in our store, and we actively seek out stockists who are conscious of their plastic consumption in both production and delivering goods.
We encourage customers to bring their own containers, or buy one of our glass containers in store to purchase goods. Everything is reused as much as possible before disposal. This includes many of our jars in store which were supplied by many stores across Wareham, including Terra Organics, The Chipperies and many charity shops.

Where possible we supply organic and vegan friendly goods. The exceptions to these would be if organic was substantially more expensive (thus not competitive) or that although organic, did not fit our other requirements. We do not state we are an organic only store, a vegan/vegetarian only store, or a ‘health food’ shop.
All our goods must be produced in ethically and morally clean standards, coming from reputable suppliers whose ethics match ours.
We live by these 3 terms - reduce, reuse, recycle. We aim to reduce the amount of plastic being used to purchase goods, reuse as much as possible (containers, jars etc) and recycle when it is absolutely last resort.

We wanted to open this store to almost turn back time. To take away all the unnecessary packaging and just go back to the ‘Bare Necessities’. You can bring in your container, weigh before you fill, fill up as much as you need, and then pay for what how much you have. It’s really as simple as that.

And if you don’t have a container, or you just simply forgot? No problem, we stock both 'recycled’ bottles and jars which have been given a new lease of life, or you can opt for a more pricey ‘new’ bottle/jar to purchase your goods in. Find out more about how we work here.

Please do come by, and we’ll show you what we are all about.

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.