re-fill – devizine.com

This week I popped in to see Justina at Devizes’ Healthy Life Company in the Little Brittox, and she took me upstairs …. okay, pack it in, you lot! If you’re reasoning I best not read this any further think again, especially if you’re stuck for a few Christmas shopping ideas, because upstairs, and I didn’t even know they had an upstairs, a wonderful Christmas market is blossoming……

There I stood amidst a mini winter wonderland, chock full of gift ideas as Justina explained they do this every year, and showed me the centrepiece, a colour-changing mushroom lamp which will be raffled at the end. She told me a delightful story of a past raffle prize, which fascinated a young boy who came up everyday after school to see it. “His Dad eventually bought him a ticket,” Justina continued, “and when we went to pull the raffle we pulled out two tickets by accident. One was the little lad’s and the other was my other half! So we had to tell him what had happened…” There’s me speculating Justina’s ‘other half’ was left disappointed, “it was very sweet.” Then she directed my attention to this year’s prize.

“We do it every year, and we’ve still got lots of things to arrive. It’s all from good companies that we like, like the English Soap Company, most things we have here are from English companies.”

And there was me thinking Justina had some bad news, on the basis of the Little Eco Shop in Couch Lane shutting down. “The whole industry of zero-waste shops, most of them have closed, there’s hardly any left,” she expressed. But the Healthy Life Company has been trading for an amazing forty years, and Justina has been at the helm for the last fifteen of them, it was popular, shoppers dropping in throughout our chat. “I never meant to stay this long,” she told me, “But Devizes does that to you, doesn’t it? And I love it!”

So, long live the Healthy Life, I reckoned, as Justina showed me the more daily products downstairs. “This is all our refills which we’ve been doing for a long time now,” she explained, showing me a tiered system for storing products. They have to sell fast in the refills and if they don’t, Justina showed me some packaging made from potato starch, “so it’s home compostable. Another thing we do, if it comes in this packaging, that gets taken away and is made into pet food bags.”

Twenty-six different liquid products I was introduced to next. “We have this thing we call the Devizes Refill Challenge,” Justina went on to, “which says, just make one change. It’s not about making masses of changes. If every family in Devizes went, right, one bottle, what one can we lose, let’s do washing up liquid, or laundry; it’s a real easy win. If everyone did one tiny change, you’d probably save six hundred plastic bottles a month.” I supposed, once you were doing this, and you were here among the other liquid refills, you’re more likely to try others, until it becomes the new norm.

Organic veg is a new thing for the Healthy Life Company. “Research from the Soil Association is saying now that one of every three foods has pesticides in it. So, organic is about minimising the amount of stuff that’s in your shopping basket which isn’t good for you.” Though, the blinkered illusion is this comes at a price, wonderful though these independent and caring shops are. “I’ve done a price-check,” Justina said, “comparison against Sainsburys and our organic veg is cheaper, and it’s not a not a massive difference between organic and non-organic.” Then she worried it all sounded middle-class, “but if you’re going to cut meat out of your diet, occasionally, perhaps once a week, and go to veg, you might as well have some veg with optimal nutrition, and it will be cheaper than buying that meat!”

Optimal nutrition was a term Justina used quite a bit, and there was me, thinking about nipping into Greggs afterwards! But what of this current trend of lunch on the run? I wondered why The Healthy Life didn’t sell lunchtime snacks, and lo-and-behold, it seems I came here on the right day. “We just want people to come in, do a price check; we are mindful of quality and price,” she told me, a tad understandably frustrated with the scaffolding outside and the roadworks; herein where I suggested my lunchtime snack idea.

Great minds think alike(!), a new fridge was being installed later on that day, by coincidence, to offer vegetarian Buddha bowls, salads and wraps. Although Devizes may be awash with choice for such, The Healthy Life are hoping, with over twenty nutritional ingredients in each, and available from Wednesday to Friday, lunchtime you might pop in, and while you’re there, check out the Christmas gift ideas upstairs, try the Devizes Refill Challenge or just browse this lovely independent shop we are lucky to have here in town.

The Healthy Life Company can be found at 4 Little Brittox, Devizes. Tel: 01380 725558 or email: enquiries@thehealthylife.co.uk and they also have a wonderful online shop with more products they can store in the shop, HERE.

Me? I bypassed Greggs in the end; another time, cold and malign sausage and bean melt, another time!