On Earth Day, which is Friday, April 22, this year, Tare Market, which stocks only plastic-free items, celebrates the opening of its second location in the Broadway Building in Northeast Minneapolis with a party from 3-7 p.m.
“When we started three years ago” by opening Tare Market Nokomis, says founder Amber Haukedahl, “the demand for zero-waste products was high. Now, it’s overwhelming. People really want to live more sustainably but don’t feel they have the local resources to do so. We’ve had people at the Nokomis store who drive in from Des Moines, Fergus Falls, as well as in Twin Cities, but they live 45 minutes away. We knew we wanted to open a second location to serve our community. Now is the right time to do that.”
Haukedahl attended college in her home state of California, earning a degree in conservation biology. After graduation, she traveled the country teaching environmental education to urban youth and children with special needs. She also managed biological field stations in Ecuador and Paraguay before meeting her husband and settling in Minnesota. She has been living zero waste since 2017 and started ZeroWasted.net as a resource for others wanting to live more sustainably.
Tare Market Nokomis fulfills customers’ desires to reduce their carbon footprint by selling 135 bulk food items and more than 700 zero-waste swaps, like shampoo bars and compostable dental floss. Customers can bring old containers for refill or borrow market jars to take home. The new Northeast location, which is a larger space, will allow Tare Market to add more bulk items and products that take up space, like cloth diapers. “We’ll also have more space to process online orders,” she says. “We’re a small, lean company. The Northeast store will give us more room to function more efficiently.”
To get you started, here are five products Haukedahl recommends for zero-waste spring cleaning:
- Dissolvable, all-purpose cleaning tablets. Just drop them in your reusable bottle, add a sprayer, and get cleaning.
- Reusable cloth for your Swiffer. Made with organic and recycled cotton, these clothes clean your floors just as well as disposable covers. When you’re finished, just throw them in the washing machine.
- Toilet-cleaning bombs. Just like a bath bomb, you drop these in the basin or tank and watch them fizz. Then use your sustainable toilet brush to clean the bowl.
- Plastic-free toilet brush and stand. Made of untreated beechwood and natural boar bristles, the toilet brush also has a stand with a terracotta clay drip dish. Both can be composted when they become unusable.
- Countertop compost bin. A white ceramic compost bin will soon be joined by a bamboo version. (Composting kitchen scraps reduces about 50 percent of every household’s landfill waste.)
