Looking to use less plastic? Here's how a new Savannah business is aiming to do just that

A front-page article was published in the Savannah Morning News on June 4 profiling SCORE Savannah client client, Katie Rodgers-Hubbard and her business, Lite Foot. Katie's mentor is long-time Savannah SCORE Volunteer, Gary Johnson.

Katie's combination of entrepreneurship, good citizenship, and sustainability is a wonderful story and we wanted to share it with you. Here is the link to the article on savannahnow.com. 

https://www.savannahnow.com/story/news/2021/06/03/new-savannah-business-aims-reduce-plastic-use-single-use-waste/5289837001/

Katie Rogers-Hubbard

Living in an Oklahoma town with no recycling, Katie Rogers-Hubbard had an epiphany about five years ago.

"If I can't recycle, I guess the only answer is I don't buy things that need to be recycled," she said.

That was the start of what is now her Savannah-based company, Lite Foot, that makes the same goods she's come to rely on more readily available here. Even though Savannah has curbside recycling, not everything thrown in the yellow-topped bins is actually recycled. Glass is landfilled and some of the plastic is burned for energy. So Rodgers-Hubbard continues to focus on the oft-dismissed first two "Rs" that come before recycling: reduce and reuse.

"Recycling is not the end goal," she said. "It's reducing, not buying that plastic."

In her small storeroom at the Savannah Stables, a west Savannah co-working space favored by artists, she's stacked the shelves with her inventory. There are household cleaning products with a twist, like dishwashing soap in a bar form. It comes paired with a wooden scrub brush.

"You just rub it on there and it gets super sudsy," she said, demonstrating the motion with the brush. "You don't even need the bottle at all and it'll last a long time. This lasts my husband and I four months."

There's also shampoo and conditioner in aluminum bottles or from pumper jugs used to refill reusable containers. Lite Foot also stocks durable versions of some typically single-use items, including reusable silicone food containers and the now familiar reusable aluminum straws. The latter seem to be a gateway product for many people.

At pop ups she's held around Savannah, including in Starland, shoppers will home in on the reusable aluminum straws, saying they have one.

"I'm like, 'Great, thank you. You get it. Let's talk about other things,'" Rodgers-Hubbard said.

Rodgers-Hubbard and her husband moved to Savannah last summer from his previous military post in Germany. With guidance from a mentor provided by Savannah's SCORE program, she started Lite Foot to fill a need she saw for a one-stop shop for items that aren't single use or packaged in plastic. She promotes her business on Facebook and Instagram and sells online at litefootcompany.com.