True Sustainability: How An Atlanta Refillery Is Rewriting the Rules

A glass jar makes a satisfying clink as it settles onto the counter at Joyful Jarra's Adair Park storefront located inside CreateATL. A customer and staff member work together, weighing the empty jar before filling it with sustainably-sourced laundry detergent, then weighing it again. No plastic packaging. No corporate middleman. Just detergent, glass, and the quiet revolution of choosing differently.

For Veronica, founder of Joyful Jarra, this moment (repeated over and over each day) contains everything she's trying to build. Not just a business that reduces plastic waste. Not just a workplace that employs neurodivergent individuals and people with developmental disabilities. Something bigger: a model that refuses to separate caring for the planet from caring for people.

Veronica traces her vision back to 2021, watching her good friend Bookworm transform. Bookworm, a woman with an intellectual disability, had never experienced meaningful employment before. Then she got a job at a neuro-inclusive refillery in Durham, North Carolina, and everything shifted.

The spark caught fire, fueled by her lifelong love of nature, her abuela's eco-conscious habits, and years of advocacy work that taught her how systems fail people while claiming to serve them.

She began to imagine: What if she could create that same space in Atlanta? A refillery that reduces plastic waste while creating inclusive job opportunities. A business model that refuses the false choice between environmental sustainability and social justice.

Walk into most conversations about sustainability and you'll hear familiar refrains: carbon footprints, plastic reduction, renewable energy. These concerns matter greatly. But Veronica kept bumping against the limitations of this frame. Environmental sustainability that ignores human dignity isn't truly sustainable, it just shifts harm around.

"Just like sustainability asks us to reduce waste and create lasting solutions, disability inclusion challenges us to build workplaces where everyone has a place and purpose," she explains.

The same extractive mindset operates in both directions. It depletes natural resources and devalues human potential when that potential doesn't fit conventional expectations. It creates economic systems where marginalized communities also face the worst environmental hazards. It produces employment rates of fewer than 1 in 5 for people with intellectual disabilities,[1] even as businesses claim they can't find workers.

True sustainability, Veronica realized, requires different questions: Not just "Is this better for the planet?" but "Is this better for people? Which people? Who benefits and who gets left behind?"

At Joyful Jarra's two Atlanta area storefronts (Adair Park and Avondale Estates), customers bring their own containers or select from upcycled jars and bottles available in-store. They refill the containers with non-toxic, biodegradable household and personal care products: dish soap, laundry detergent, shampoo, body wash. All the ordinary necessities of daily life, reimagined.

The system dramatically reduces single-use plastic while making sustainable living feel accessible instead of intimidating. There's no eco-perfectionism here, no judgment for people just starting. Just practical solutions and patient education.

But the revolutionary aspect of Joyful Jarra isn't what they sell, it's who they bring on the team and why. The business centers inclusive employment opportunities for neurodivergent individuals and people with developmental disabilities. People who face staggering unemployment despite their abilities, desires, and willingness to work.

One of the biggest barriers to inclusive employment is a persistent misconception: that hiring, or even job training for, neurodivergent individuals or people with developmental disabilities requires complex, expensive accommodations that burden businesses.

Joyful Jarra's daily operations tell a different story.

Research backs this up consistently: employees with developmental disabilities demonstrate high retention rates, strong attention to detail, and positive contributions to workplace culture. The issue isn't capability, it's opportunity and willingness to adapt standard practices designed for a narrow definition of "normal."

"Inclusive employment strengthens our operations, builds loyal customer relationships, and deepens our community roots," Veronica notes. "Financial and social sustainability aren't competing goals, they reinforce each other."

Veronica doesn't romanticize the work. She's transparent about the challenges of running a values-based business in an economic system designed to reward the opposite.

Joyful Jarra isn't profitable yet. Every day, Veronica balances running the refillery with nonprofit work and parenting two children. She's working toward goals to improve profit margins by building connections to source directly from manufacturers and developing partnerships with local makers for Joyful Jarra-branded products. She's pursuing grants and interest-free loans aligned with their values.

These challenges aren't unique to Joyful Jarra, they're endemic to businesses that prioritize impact over profit maximization. Ethical sourcing increases costs. Sustainable packaging cuts into margins. Paying living wages while maintaining affordable prices creates financial pressure that conventional businesses don't face.

This is precisely why community support matters. When businesses like Joyful Jarra receive support through intentional shopping, patient investors, storytelling, and supportive policies, they can survive long enough to prove the model works. They become examples that make the next inclusive, sustainable business easier to launch.

Ready to support truly sustainable business in Atlanta? Here's how:

Shop the refillery. Visit Joyful Jarra's Atlanta storefronts (Avondale Estates or at Create ATL in Adair Park), attend mobile pop-ups, or order online. Every purchase supports environmental sustainability and inclusive employment.

Share their story. Post about Joyful Jarra on social media, tell friends about the refillery model, and talk about inclusive employment in your networks. Visibility creates possibility.

Donate clean containers. Drop off jars and bottles to make refilling accessible for more customers.

Volunteer your skills. Joyful Jarra especially needs marketing, social media, and design support. Do you have talents to share?

Advocate for change. Ask other businesses about their inclusive hiring practices. Support policies that incentivize sustainable business and inclusive employment. Celebrate companies doing it right.

Back at the storefront, another jar clinks onto the counter. Another customer chooses refilling over buying new. Another small act of participation in something larger.

Joyful Jarra's model asks us to expand our definition of what sustainability means.

It's not enough to reduce plastic waste if the people working in sustainable businesses face exploitation. It's not enough to create inclusive workplaces if those workplaces perpetuate environmental harm.

True sustainability (the kind that can actually sustain over time) must care simultaneously for planetary health and human dignity.

This is what true sustainability looks like. This is what a caring community requires.

And this is already happening in Atlanta—one refillery, one inclusive workplace, one transformed understanding at a time.

The jar is full now. The customer pays, thanks the employee, and walks out carrying one jar of dish soap and another of shampoo: proof that different systems are possible. That we can choose to care for people and the planet simultaneously.

That sustainability, real sustainability, starts with refusing to throw anyone away.