If you’re trying to live a more plastic-free life, Milwaukee’s new “refillery” might be for you.
At ECO MKE Refillery, you can bring in a reusable container, like a mason jar or glass jug, and buy refills of dish soap, detergent, body wash and more.
Kayla Bouma is the owner and founder of ECO MKE. She says her new brick-and-mortar in the Third Ward also sells sustainable home goods like bamboo utensils, dryer balls and toothpaste tablets.
Bouma spoke with Lake Effect’s Xcaret Nuñez to share more about her business and what she envisions for its new location.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you become interested in sustainable living?
It wasn't until college that I started to really think about [sustainability]. I was really interested in psychology and sociology, and I had a professor at Carroll University who taught classes about our relationship with the planet and how we impact it as humans, which I thought was really cool. So I ended up changing my major a little bit and got my bachelor's in sociology with an emphasis in environmental sustainability. I then got into health and wellness with sustainability – those things go together in a lot of ways because a lot of the choices that we can make that are better for the planet are actually better for our health as well. So that's when I started to stop buying so much polyester clothing and new clothing, and I started to thrift my outfits. I was also focusing a little more on what I was eating – trying to make more of my own food, not store and heat so much food and plastic. And in making simple switches like that, I noticed a huge difference in my energy, my health and my sleep. I was creating less waste, too, which was awesome.
How did the idea to start ECO MKE Refillery come up for you?
It definitely was not always on my radar to own a refill store. I was always a refill-er. During COVID, [Milwaukee] had a shop called The Glass Pantry, which later turned into Greenlife Trading Company. It was the first refill store in the Milwaukee area. It was definitely something the city needed, and I loved going in there. In college, I started an Instagram where I talk about sustainable living and would always post about the Green Life Pantry/Greenlife Trading Company.
It was the day after the Milwaukee location closed that I was like, ‘Where are people going to go now to get these things?’ I was so sad, and it wasn't on my radar until then to start something of my own. By the end of 2023, I got the LLC for ECO MKE. I sat on this idea for a while, and I got the push in 2025 to start ECO MKE. I felt I had collected enough information and talked to enough people about what to do. I had never worked in retail before, so all of this was very new to me. But at the same time, I had been a refiller for so long that I knew the process and what products to carry – I've used all these products myself. So we opened in April 2025, and throughout April to December last year, we did 30 markets, and the question that people always asked was ‘Where are you located?’
I wanted the store to be a thing eventually, but I didn't wanna jump into a brick-and-mortar right away. I did some consignment with a couple of people – Lucy at Indigo Plant Collective, just two doors down from here – she invited me to have a shelf at her store. And then this spot nearby opened up, and I fell in love with it. So the secession made sense to scale where we're at now, and I definitely couldn't have done any of this without the people we've met along the way.
What do you hope this new physical space brings to the community?
I really want this to be an inclusive, safe space for someone to come in and give sustainability a try. We have a lot of people who come in that have been refilling or have refilled at previous refill stores, so they're used to it. But I also want to attract people who haven't been introduced to this before, and I want to make it accessible and affordable for them. I would love to eventually host community events and workshops revolving around sustainability. There are lots of business owners, makers and vendors that I met last year that are just the best people. And I would love to have this space be a platform for them as well. We also have a community corner [in-store], and right now we're collecting donations for an art swap-up. But yeah, I hope that this is a happy place for the community to be able to walk into.
You can learn more about ECO MKE Refillery through their website and Instagram.
