Jill Hawker has always been crafty — it’s why she started making bath and body products for her friends 25 years ago. That became her small side business called All Things Jill. With a growing interest in clean products, Hawker ensured every ingredient she used was clean enough to eat when she took the business full time in 2004.
In 2012, she opened the doors to a small storefront for her All Things Jill products. It has since evolved into the eco-friendly and reduced-waste store The Apothecary in Inglewood.
The store has grown tremendously in the 13 years since its opening, offering Calgary’s first refillery back in 2017 along with dozens of clean local brands, workshops and markets.
Shoppers can browse natural home-cleaning products, bath and body items, natural remedies, and low-waste home goods such as laundry bars and soy candles. They can learn to DIY with the store’s popular workshops for bath bombs, cleaning products, candles, soap and more. And with the refillery, customers can bring any clean and dry container for Hawker and her team to fill up with their product of choice, saving money on favourite products and saving the landfills from disposable waste.
“We live in a throwaway world,” says Hawker. “We live in a fast-everything world. Slowing things down by refilling things or repurposing containers, for example, is a good thing. It’s important, because our landfills are getting full. If everybody could reduce their waste by 10 per cent — holy cow! What a difference that would make.”
921 9 Ave. S.E., 403-453-0313, the-apothecary.ca, @apothecaryyyc
