Ross Ching—Inspiring His Community with the Zero-Waste Lifestyle
Image of Ross Ching and family.
Interview by: Alana Eastling
Editor: Jeni Fjelstad
Creative Direction: Catie Menke
Ross Ching practices a zero-waste mindset that considers the whole life cycle of an object. When sourcing products for his storefront, he asks what the product is made of. Can he source it locally? Is the price point accessible? Mama & Hapa’s is on a mission to bring zero-waste to the masses.
Ross, and his wife Nadia Takla, are the co-founders of Mama & Hapa’s Zero Waste Shop in Portland, Oregon. I was excited to discover their shop in my neighborhood, as Mama & Hapa’s provides bulk biodegradable and plastic-free options for a wide range of household and body care products. I am proudly a frequent customer. The shop is named Mama & Hapa’s to honor both their mom-and-pop establishment and Ross’s mixed Chinese and white heritage. Hapa is the Hawai’ian word for “half,” and is colloquially used to refer to a person of mixed ethnicities.
Image of Mama & Hapa’s.
When Ross first heard of the zero-waste movement, he realized it was only accessible to “people who were very dedicated and have the resources of time and money.” His love for the outdoors and aspiration to advocate for the environment led to the founding of the refill store. Ross hopes his customers’ shopping experience in limiting their plastic impact acts as an introduction to a zero-waste mindset.
While there is no one way to practice zero-waste, shifting toward a zero-waste mindset can have the most impact. Ross believes “people making less trash is great but the impact of being more cognizant of your actions and putting the climate at the top of one’s mind is zero-waste. Most of the impactful stuff you can do involves not buying anything — DIYing, repurposing, or buying secondhand.”
Ross determined four objectives in creating a unique consumer experience at Mama & Hapa’s. First, Mama & Hapa’s provides free repurposed containers alongside their bulk refill products and maintains this stock with donations from the shop’s customers. This model focuses on reusing glass, rather than recycling. Although glass is a recyclable material, “it is quite carbon-intensive to raise the temperature to a melting point.” The repurposed containers eliminate this carbon-intensive cost from the customer’s experience.
Second, Ross had to search for a weighing system to make zero-waste shopping more efficient, as the manual weighing systems generally used for bulk shopping can be cumbersome to customers. He found his inspiration in breweries, adapting the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) dispenser technology used to measure the volume of the customer’s beer for Mama & Hapa’s. Their distinct dispensers electronically measure the product by volume, making zero-waste shopping more convenient.
The third objective of Mama & Hapa’s is to create a zero-waste shopping experience with an accessible price point. There is a preconception that zero-waste has to be expensive, but at Mama & Hapa’s, Ross aims to align pricing with that of a grocery store. The more people can reduce waste in their shopping experience, the better.
Lastly, Ross considered location so that more people could conveniently build Mama & Hapa’s into their routines. Proximity is the goal.
When conducting market research for a second store, he realized 80% of their customers lived within a 2-mile radius. People just a few miles away had never heard of Mama & Hapa’s. Ultimately, to serve the shop’s mission to make zero-waste more available across Portland, Ross hopes to expand to a similar density as grocery stores. Since their grand opening in May of 2021, Mama & Hapa’s success has led to the opening of a second location just a few miles away in December 2021.
The shop has recently acquired a warehouse as well to store inventory in support of its continued growth. “My middle-term goal is to expand more shops to have zero-waste stores more accessible in various neighborhoods,” he said.
Thank you, Ross, for sharing your passion for zero-waste with our community. I look forward to Mama & Hapa’s becoming a Portland household name!
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