Our Place Tauranga
Clean Living If you ask 23-year-old Charlotte Greer why she chose to launch a small business selling cleaning products, her initial answer is simple: “Remember that dingy flat where you lived with a bunch of randoms? Yeah, that’s why cleaning products.” The longer answer involves studying economics and management at uni, attempting to practice sustainability as a student (which she describes as “laughable due to how expensive everything is”), followed by a global pandemic that both put paid to heading off on the classic Kiwi OE and left her with a lot of time on her hands. “I graduated in lockdown — my cap and gown was a shower cap and my dressing gown,” Charlotte says, laughing. “My plans for my big OE went out the window. So, since it looked like I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon, I took my travel money that I’d been saving for years and turned my attention towards Veto. “I paid for everything myself, so I couldn’t afford to hire a designer to design the logo or the labels, I did that all. To make the products, I’ve taken over my parent’s garage. I sourced all my ingredients locally and if I couldn’t find it within driving distance, I figured out how to make it. I had to teach myself how to start a website and how to use social media. There is a lot of DIY with the making of Veto. It’s all me, baby!” Veto, which means ‘I forbid’ in Latin, began as just one multipurpose product — washing powder for both dishwashers and washing machines. Looking for further ways for people to reduce plastic in their homes, a dishwashing soap slab, a spot stain remover bar and a cleaning powder that can be used as bathroom scrub or dissolved in water to make an all-purpose surface spray soon followed. “I wanted people to have something they could introduce into their lives that was practical, effective and simple but just so happened to be sustainable,” she says. It was Charlotte’s entrepreneurial spirit and DIY attitude that caught the eye of the ReMaker Space team — the innovation hub within Our Place Tauranga that provides resources to create more sustainable communities — and at the start of this year, she set up shop in one of the cleverly converted ReMaker shipping containers. Furnished with personal (and sustainable, of course) touches such
as an upcycled redwood bench made by her dad and her grandmother’s old coffee table, Veto’s new space functions as a refillery but also gives visitors the opportunity to experience the products firsthand. It also gives Charlotte hands-on experience in a bricks-and-mortar business — an opportunity she describes as “amazing”. “As a small business, having the chance to see what a brick-and-mortar version of your brand may look like within a size-appropriate scale is unbelievable. Tauranga is so expensive as is, but as a small business starting out, the opportunity from ReMaker Space has allowed me to plan, scale, fail and problem-solve what Veto may look like in different circumstances. “Also, being surrounded by other creatives and brands whose goal is to create a sustainable community through their own redesigning of resources, means I can learn from others, hear ideas and collaborate to make new products.” Key opening hours: Wednesdays 11am-3pm, Thursdays 2pm-7pm, but may also be open at other times throughout the week. @veto.zerowaste vetozerowaste.online 18
Story: Josie Steenhart Photo: Erin Cave
Veto’s Charlotte Greer now has the first physical shop for her sustainable cleaning products in amongst a community of like-minded folk at the ReMaker Space.