Boulder has had a Universal Zero Waste Ordinance since 2015, implemented the following year, requiring every property owner in the city — residential and commercial alike — to subscribe to compost, recycling and trash service, and requiring businesses to provide correctly placed bins, post signage and train staff on sorting. The city’s strategic plan defines zero waste as an 85 percent diversion rate. On 1 January 2024 Boulder’s ten-cent disposable bag fee expanded to every retail store in the city, on the same date Colorado’s statewide ban on plastic checkout bags at large stores took effect.
Policy is the easy part. The harder question is where you can actually walk in with an empty container and walk out with it full, and here the honest answer is that Boulder County’s refill landscape is thinner than its reputation suggests. Two of the shops that dominate older roundups are gone or moved. What follows is what is genuinely operating, checked rather than copied from a 2021 list, with the closures named at the end so you do not drive to them.
Nude Foods Market, Boulder
Nude Foods Market at 3233 Walnut St is the closest thing the county has to a full zero-waste grocery, open daily 10am to 7pm. Verity Noble and Rachel Irons founded it in 2020 as a pandemic bike-delivery service; the Walnut Street storefront opened in October 2021 and a Denver store followed in April 2024. There is now a second Boulder shop as well, at 4593 Broadway St in North Boulder, keeping earlier hours than Walnut Street — 7:30am to 4pm on weekdays and 7:30am to 3pm at weekends. Everything — produce, body care, cleaning products, juices and eight rotating house-made meals — comes in reusable glass jars on a deposit system: $1.50 per jar with $1 back on return, the difference covering sanitising. A membership tier waives the per-jar fee. Roughly 45 percent of stock is locally sourced.
Simply Bulk Market, Longmont
Simply Bulk Market has been running at 418 Main St in downtown Longmont under a tagline that states the whole proposition: pay for the product, not the package. Hours are Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm, Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm. The range covers natural and organic food, spices and spice blends, coffee beans with an in-store grinder, teas, vinegars and oils, kombucha and pet supplies — plus, for wellness staples specifically, bulk body care including lotions and soaps and bulk cleaning supplies and laundry detergent. Bring your own containers, clean and sanitised; staff weigh them for tare at the counter before filling.
Bridge Refill Market, Erie
Bridge Refill Market sits at 285 Cheesman St in Erie, about twenty minutes from Boulder, closed Mondays and otherwise open Tuesday to Friday 10am to 6pm, Saturday 10am to 5pm and Sunday noon to 4pm. Christine Twining founded it after two decades living in six countries and watching packaging waste accumulate everywhere she went. Refill categories run to cleaning and laundry, bath and personal care, baby products, bulk food including spices, grains, legumes and baking staples, and teas. The mechanics are spelled out: bring a container, staff weigh it empty and attach a tracking tag, you fill it, and you check out by weight or volume.
Rebecca’s Herbal Apothecary, for the wellness side of bulk
Not a refill shop in the household-cleaning sense, but the closest thing Boulder has to a bulk wellness counter. Rebecca’s Herbal Apothecary & Supply at 1227 Spruce St sells all its bulk herbs by the ounce, cut to order at the counter rather than pre-bagged, alongside a wall of bulk essential oils, extracts, teas and blends stored in glass, plus base ingredients such as carrier oils, salts and clays for anyone making their own preparations. National low-waste guides list it as a bring-your-own-container stop, so call ahead if you are planning around it.
Ku Cha House of Tea
Ku Cha House of Tea at 1211 Pearl St was founded in 2006 by Rong Pan and Qin Liu, and is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 8pm and Sunday 11am to 6pm. The Pearl Street flagship carries more than a hundred whole-leaf varieties — green, white, oolong, black, puerh, chai, herbal and functional blends — scooped to order from bulk tins rather than sold in single-serve sachets. For a daily staple most people otherwise buy boxed and individually wrapped, that is a meaningful difference in packaging. Outside low-waste guides list it as a bring-your-own-container stop, so ask first.
Cedar & Hyde Mercantile
Cedar & Hyde Mercantile occupies 2015 and 2019 10th St on Boulder’s West End, founded in 2013 by Christie Lambert with her sister Poss, with the Home store added in 2018. Hours are Monday to Thursday 11am to 6pm, Friday and Saturday 10am to 6pm, closed Sunday. It appears on low-waste guides as a place to refill bottles with non-toxic cleaning supplies, so call ahead before making the trip for a refill specifically.
The ones older guides still send you to
Two corrections, because both still appear near the top of search results. Refill Revolution on Arapahoe Ave — the shop that anchored practically every Boulder zero-waste article written between 2019 and 2022 — is closed; a Colorado sustainability directory records the storefront closing and the business moving online only. The Conscious Merchant has left the county, moving from Main St in Louisville to Blake St in Denver. Alfalfa’s Market has closed both its Broadway and Louisville stores.
What to bring, and what to expect
A short practical list. Wide-mouth jars are easier to fill and easier to clean than bottles; bring more than you think you need, since the temptation to add one more thing is strong. Every shop here weighs your container empty before filling, so do not pre-fill anything at home. Expect the unit price to look higher than a supermarket own-brand and lower than the equivalent packaged natural-foods product, since you are not paying for the bottle. And expect the county’s real refill options to be Boulder, Longmont and Erie rather than a shop on every corner — the scarcity is genuine, and it is why the two closures above left a gap nobody has filled.
Featured image: Photo by Ella's Kitchen Company Limited, licensed CC BY 2.0. Source: Openverse.
