OUR JOURNEY

HOW THE FILLERY CAME TO BE

Hi! I'm Sarah, founder of The Fillery. I embarked on this journey several years ago, as I found myself increasingly saddened by the global issue of plastic pollution. When I moved to Brooklyn in 2006, I was immediately confronted with the very visible and seemingly insurmountable waste problem throughout New York City. On average, Americans generate about four and a half pounds of waste per day, and a significant portion of that waste is tied to food. In New York City, almost a third of the 4 million tons of waste sent to landfills each year is food waste. Another 7.5% of our waste stream consists of plastic film such as supermarket bags. 

There is no obvious solution for this global problem, so I began to brainstorm ideas for how to make an impact at a local level, and tackling the food and packaging waste problem seemed like a good place to start. I recalled a shop called By the Pound, a fantastic bulk store in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I shopped a number of years ago. There’s really nothing comparable in Brooklyn, and for many years I’ve wondered why this concept hasn’t shown up here. I’ve always wanted to live near a such a store, and was certain that others felt the same void. After 10 years of living in Brooklyn, it still doesn’t exist, so I decided to do it myself. Thus The Fillery was born. Our main objective is to reduce packaging and food waste. We want to provide our community not just with the tools to live more sustainably and more healthily, but also with the understanding of how to do so effectively.