About Us
Our Story
The Botanical Home Store is solely owned and operated by Bella, a mom, wildlife Ecologist, and nature enthusiast located in the heart of Florida.
Her journey to environmentalism began when she started her first job at a plant nursery and hydroponics store at the age of 16. This eventually lead her to achieve a degree in Wildlife Ecology and Conservation from the University of Florida, which opened the doors to a variety of environmental work. After college, Bella started working as a Biological Scientist for a small environmental consulting firm in Gainesville doing wildlife surveys, wetland delineations, threatened and endangered species protection, and more.
But Bella saw that environmentalism was not just a career choice, it was a lifestyle, and one that was not easily adopted in today's world. After becoming a mother and through years of running a family household, she saw how difficult and time-consuming it was to be a conscious consumer. With her dream of making a change, paired with her environmental knowledge, she knew she could make a greater impact on the environment starting by making conscious consumerism easy for all. Thus, The Botanical Home Store was born.
Our Promise
Did you know that only 9% of consumer plastics are actually recycled?! That's why The Botanical Home Store has vowed to only offer products that contain no plastic-based ingredients and can be (actually) recycled, biodegraded, or composted and will be packaged in recyclable, plastic-free materials. For shipping our products, we use a variety of sustainable and plastic-free shipping materials that can be either 100% recyclable or compostable!
Because we feel so strongly about not contributing to plastic production and waste, we will never offer products on our website that contain any plastics if there are plastic-free options. This means, you may have to be crafty and put your environmental cap on for certain things we do offer!
Along our research journey of finding the perfect, plastic-free products for you, we have come across some surprising facts including finding out that there are no 100% plastic-free spray bottles! Now, don't get us wrong, we love using all-purpose sprays for cleaning, so at home we use recycled spray heads and place them on glass bottles which our cleaner comes in and hope our customers to do the same. However, if you don't have any trigger sprayers or pumps to repurpose, we do offer spray bottles and pump dispensers that are environmentally friendly and long-lasting!
Another hick-up we have come across in our search for the best kitchen an laundry products, are that many products that claim to be plastic-free, may actually contain PVAs or PFAS (synthetic polymers). This means some products may be hard to come by or often low on quantity, but we won't stop to find you the best of the best, and when we do, you BET we will get them to your home!
We thank you for being a part of our plastic-free movement!
Disclaimer: Because we support re-using materials, we often will ship your orders in boxes that have been donated. These boxes may contain plastic tape from previous handlers. If you receive a box with old plastic tape and can not reuse it in your own way, please preform a sacred removal ceremony: bless the tape and thank it for its use, slap it around and stomp on it some, then give it nice burial in your waste bin.
Our Initiatives
At the Botanical Home Store, we strive to make every part of our business "earth-approved" including:
- ONLY offer and support brands that are in alignment with our mission of plastic-free living
- zero-waste, plastic-free shipping
- composting all paper scraps or any compostable waste
- using only second-hand office supplies like furniture, storage, and tape rollers
- utilizing scheduled package pick-up times with mail carriers to reduce carbon emissions from transportation
- purchase locally as much as possible