Sustainable Shops
Browse Chicago's sustainable shops, zero waste stores, refill stores, and other locally owned sustainable businesses and organizations! Local businesses are the best places to support when working towards a more sustainable lifestyle. Most of these locations can also be found on our Interactive Map.
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Zero Waste Stores and Refilleries
The Eco Flamingo (Website Sponsor)
This zero waste general store has Chicago's largest selection! Bring your own container, because you can fill it up with bulk food, cleaning products, personal care items, and much more. They also carry a wide variety of eco friendly home goods and gifts, and offer dropoff boxes for Terracycle and Ecoship.
Lincoln Square
The Unwaste Shop (Website Sponsor)
The Unwaste Shop’s goal is to provide sustainable alternatives to everyday items. They offer a variety of plastic-free goods for household cleaning, storage and self care. Plus a refill station offering non-toxic, sustainably sourced products (sold by the ounce) that range from household cleaners and bath and body care, to dry goods and pantry essentials. Bring in your own container and refill on your household essentials today!
West Loop
à la main apothecary + refillery
Their products are hand-crafted and formulated with the purest, simplest and most effective ingredients that are truly safe for mind, body, home + wellness. Their à la main products are made with certified organic ingredients when possible and 100% therapeutic grade essential oils.
Glen Ellyn
This sustainable grocery store also has home and personal care items. They sell locally sourced meats and produce, bulk dry goods, coffee, tea, spices, castile soap, laundry detergent, and more, and you can bring your own containers to refill!
Logan Square
Fillery is a mobile sustainable refill shop! They carry a variety of sustainable hair, personal, and home care items, in an effort to minimize the single use plastics in your home by refilling them. Book an appointment and they will come to you! Also check out their calendar to see where they will pop up.
Mobile and Pop-Up
Gaia’s Market is making sustainable attainable as the South Suburbs’ first low-waste market and refillery. Fill up reusable containers at the bulk bar with household cleaning, laundry care, bath and body, skincare and oral care products. Find sustainable home goods, gifts, beauty, pet essentials, baby products, stationery and more in the market.
Homewood, IL
This circular economy-focused nonprofit operates out of an old firehouse, and their retail space offers eco-friendly home and garden products, personal care items, dry goods, stationary, DIY kits, seeds, and more. They also have a strong system for container reuse- you can bring your own container for many of their products and return it later.
Back of the Yards
A waste free shop that offers refillable/zero waste solutions for a variety of products, specializing in lifestyle, personal care and home goods. Oh, and wine. That’s right, they will eventually have zero waste wine!
Humboldt Park
A full-service, co-op grocery store that provides a mindfully curated selection of local, sustainable, and healthy foods while prioritizing food accessibility. They also have an extensive bulk department that includes pantry staples, wellness, and body care products!
Oak Park, IL
A zero waste shop with dry goods, home and hygiene products, and prepared foods all packed in fully returnable containers. The prepared food menu changes with a new popup company working out of the storefront every few months. Fun, fresh and totally waste free!
Currently Online Only
The Turtle Stop is a tiny but mighty retail shop, offering a variety of products made and grown at The Plant and Bubbly, everyday grocery, plastic-free household and cleaning essentials, gifts, and more.
Back of the Yards
Local Sustainable Businesses
Lena Rose Beauty (Website Sponsor)
A holistic spa and salon that also sells sustainable beauty products. Lena Rose wants to see a world where slow, clean, and sustainable beauty IS the standard—that all beauty companies will use only good ingredients and packaging to better the health of humans and our planet.
Lincoln Square and Naperville
Rooted Living (Website Sponsor)
Rooted Living offers a curated selection of practical and beautiful home and gift items that are thoughtfully sourced, with an emphasis on items that are eco-friendly, fair trade, or from local businesses.
Avondale
One of a kind accessories for home and body created from fabric diverted from landfills & certified organic fabrics. Striving for zero waste.
Online Only, with local pickup
Why buy new when you can borrow from this nonprofit lending library of over 2,500 tools? In addition to standard hardware tools, they also have camping equipment, AV equipment, arts and craft items, sewing tools, and more!
Bridgeport
An independent coffee roaster that has been a local Chicago favorite since 1975. Bring your clean containers to fill them with coffee beans, loose leaf teas, herbs, and spices! Also will serve specialty coffee drinks in your byo mug.
East Lakeview
Creative Chicago Reuse Exchange (CCRx)
A nonprofit organization offering a wide array of free and low-cost reuse and surplus materials, supplies, and equipment for nonprofit and community organizations, artists, and educators.
Auburn Gresham
Sells high-quality recycled paint at discounted rates. They are also committed to hiring people with disabilities, and regularly donate paint to non profits.
Wooddale
Dedicated to reducing the entertainment industry’s environmental impact while fostering community involvement and resource recovery, and help companies smoothly transition to new industry standards, embrace cutting-edge technologies, and provide comprehensive data to show the full benefits.
Serves Chicagoland
Artisanal bath, beauty, and wellness products. Everything is 100% vegan! You can find washcloths, natural incense bundles, soaps, bath bombs, loofahs, salves, and jewelry.
Online only
A sustainable home & lifestyle shop carrying everything from brooms and brushes to recyclable cookware. Products are from makers with sustainable business and production practices, pay fair wages, and source their raw materials ethically. Nearly everything in the shop is biodegradable, recyclable or compostable.
Logan Square
Makes eco-friendly and plastic-free cleaning and personal care products.
Online only. Also available at various General Stores (above).
Sells purified, electrolyte-enhanced water in infinitely recyclable aluminum cans instead of plastic bottles. They’re also woman-owned and carbon neutral!
Online only, but available at some local stores.
Rebuilding Exchange and Evanston Rebuilding Warehouse
Offers a public retail warehouse of reclaimed home items, deconstruction services, educational workshops, and a workforce training program.
Bucktown and Evanston
This candle company's mission is to close the loop on candle consumption by upcycling empty candle vessels into brand new scented candles, using coconut soy wax and other sustainably sourced materials. Refinity candles are available online and at several retail stores in Chicago. The stores are also collection points for empty candle vessels!
Online and various stores
Sili+Bells creates handcrafted pieces that are constructed from upcycled leather and repurposed denim. The goal is to provide fun, vibrant and elegant jewelry, using 80% recycled materials so customers can feel beautiful and great about being green.
Online and various events
Offers environmentally-focused signage, merch, and design services for artists, musicians, nonprofits, and small businesses.
Bridgeport/Pilsen
VOLVERde is a sustainable lifestyle marketplace inspired by Latinx culture. Founded by two Mexican sisters who saw the need for this space, VOLVERde celebrates and reinvents cultural traditions of sustainability with modern ease. They have curated a variety of low-waste bath, body and home goods products.
Online Only
The Wasteshed collects reusable art and school materials that would otherwise be thrown away and makes them available to anyone who needs them, at low cost.
Humboldt Park and Evanston
Eco-friendly products ranging from personal care to home cleaning items. Zefiro products are made in Chicago, but available online and sold locally.
Online Only, but offers local pickup for orders.
Bike Supplies and Services
An educational bike shop that promotes sustainability by giving access to tools, skills, and opportunities for collaboration.
Rogers Park
Working Bikes gives donated bicycles new life by redistributing them as tools of empowerment. Staff refurbish some bicycles for local sales, volunteers fix up some for local donation, while most are packed into shipping containers for global communities.
Little Village
ZappaWheels delivers sustainable bicycle accessories to support your biking endeavors. Their vision is a world where the products used in biking are made from sustainable materials, manufactured in an eco-friendly way, and make biking easier and safer.
Online and in bike shops around the city.
Sustainable Clothing Brands
Ecodunia is a social enterprise dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty in Kenya, while making high-quality bags, leather (plus vegan leather), and gifts that honor both the producers and the earth. They believe in a sustainable and inclusive economy, paying fair prices to small producers and suppliers with a focus on sustainably sourced materials.
Roscoe Village & Online
Remade in Chicago
Transforms secondhand garments and fabrics into one-of-a-kind objects and wearable art. They share approachable ways to remake clothes with an aim to inspire others to creatively modify their wardrobes and to be mindful textile consumers. They host BYOT-shirt screen printing workshops, and offer commissions for custom screen printing.
Bucktown & Online
This eco-conscious clothing store has upcycled and reworked secondhand items, a selection of sustainable brands, and pure thrift.
Evanston
Wulfka is a small, independent fashion company who believes in slow fashion, thoughtful design, and gorgeous eco-friendly fabrics.
Online Only
Diaper Services
Offers ethically sourced and commercially cleaned cloth diapers, in a variety of diaper styles.
Serves Chicagoland
Provides affordable, convenient, eco-friendly diapering solutions to families across Northeastern Illinois.
Serves Chicagoland
Eco-Friendly Event Planning
Shifting the concept of sustainable hospitality to one of optimism, necessity and thoughtful, collective action by connecting consciousness to gathering + human connection.
Serves Chicagoland
Sustainable Soirées is a wedding and event planning company dedicated to making events more eco-friendly through creative design, savvy planning skills, waste reduction practices, and partnering with other eco-friendly event professionals.
Serves Chicagoland
Eco-Friendly Florists
A full service floral and event design studio whose environmental commitment includes: recycling and reusing packaging, composting floral waste, reusing vases & containers, buying locally whenever possible, eliminating floral foam use, sending all correspondence by email, and cleaning with eco-friendly products.
Jefferson Park
A regenerative urban flower farm that grows 65 varieties of blooming plants, grasses and foliage. They sell bouquet subscriptions from May-September, seedlings in spring, and dried bouquets and wreaths in the autumn and winter. They remain committed to donating a portion of their profits to organizations that lift and support our community.
Evanston
A full-service florist, offering florals for both events and everyday use. Their eco-friendly practices include composting flower waste and using toxic floral foam as seldom as possible. They own and operate a flower farm in SW Michigan, where they source most of their flowers from April to October. Their farm is MAEAP certified, a USDA program that helps farmers establish and maintain sustainable practices.
The Loop, Wicker Park
Fleur offers florals for events as well as fresh cut flowers for daily use. They’ve cut back on floral foam use by 75% and are currently researching alternatives, plus they compost most of their waste. They buy as many locally grown flowers as possible when they’re in season, and donate leftover wedding flowers to hospitals, nursing homes, and Bloom N’ Toss.
Logan Square
Modern, romantic, sustainable, hand-crafted floral design for weddings and events. Their sustainability practices include focusing on locally grown, in-season flowers during the Midwest growing season to minimize carbon footprint, recycling and composting waste, donating used flowers, and eliminating the use of toxic floral foam.
Lakeview
An urban flower farm on Chicago’s northside, they grow a variety of specialty cut flowers in sustainable urban gardens. Their flowers are available almost year-round through their CSA subscription model, retail partners, workshops, markets and through a-la-carte orders.
Lincoln Square, various store locations
Nature-inspired floral design for weddings and special events. Pollen believes in social and environmental responsibility, and their conscientious practices include working with local flower farmers, composting unused organic materials, eliminating toxic floral foam, and donating flowers after events through their flower donation program, ReBloom.
Logan Square
Artful florals for weddings and events. Their planet promise includes staying clear of toxic floral foam. They also compost, donate flowers to hospice, hospitals and nursing homes, suggest flowers in season, and source flowers from local farms in the summer months.
Logan Square
A farm-to-vase florist providing unique and fashion-forward arrangements, while maintaining an uncompromising dedication to both the environment and its surrounding communities. They offer services for weddings and corporate events, as well as arrangements for everyday use and delivery.
Englewood
For a full directory of wedding-related resources,
check out the Green Wedding Alliance.
Eco-Friendly Moving Services
(See also - BoxDibs)
Forget the waste— Blue Crates alleviate the need for sourcing cardboard boxes and tape- saving the planet in the process.
Serves Chicagoland
BoxBeaters’ reusable plastic moving boxes are not only cooler than cardboard—they’re cheaper and more eco-friendly, too. If you’re moving your home or your business, they can help you save some cash and save the planet!
Serves Chicagoland
Banner Image Credit: Artem Gavrysh
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