A Conversation With Fullfillery’s Susan Cho

Former Takoma Park resident Susan Cho helped found Maitri House and co-founded Fullfillery. Cho is also a TPSS Co-op Board Member.

This interview has been edited.

What does everybody need to know about Fullfillery?

We’re a local zero waste shop that offers body care and cleaning products with minimal and/or reusable packaging. Folks in Takoma Park and the surrounding areas have long been searching for ways to buy laundry detergent, cleaning sprays, or shampoo without generating waste, so they’re really excited about us.

We make a lot of the products ourselves, to extremely high standards of safety and sustainability. They’re available through our Bring Your Own Container station or by using “loop packaging,” where you pay a deposit for the container and then bring it back for a refund.

We sanitize and reuse the containers, allowing us to control for potential contamination for things like lotion but still eliminating packaging waste. We also offer all sorts of goods like lip balm or deodorant in compostable packaging instead of plastic. Recycling is a nice idea, but it’s a broken system. We help people reduce and reuse, instead.

We’ve also started hosting activities, talks, and swaps with our co-founder Rini Saha. Most recently, we’ve started…