The green movement has a reputation problem in places like Teesside. Sustainability, for many families stretched by the cost of living, sounds like something for people with more time and more money. One local mum of three felt exactly that way until she stumbled into a community pop-up looking for ways to cut her food bill. Ruth Ruddock started refilling her household staples, swapping her kids’ clothes, and borrowing a party kit instead of buying plastic. Her spending fell. Her waste fell with it. Months later, she’s the one telling other parents about it.
Somewhere in the North East this week, a van named Vanny DeVito is parked outside a business park, or a farmer’s market, or a care home, or a school — stocked with refillable staples and run by a family from Teesside. That operation is Ecologico, an organisation which now reaches thousands of people across the region and started with £25 and an idea.
Ruth founded the organisation in September 2019, shaped by her own family’s attempt to live sustainably without spending a fortune. Four years later, that idea had grown into something the wider community wanted to invest in and so in 2023, supporters crowdfunded £12,000 to bring Vanny DeVito to life.
Community investment
It was that act of community investment that prompted the next step. Alongside the van, Eco Connect North East CIC was established as a separate, asset-locked, non-profit structure.
“We wanted to ensure the community could see that we took their support seriously,” Ruth says. EcologicoUK remains the trading arm - the van, the online shop, the products - while the CIC carries the community mission: education, clothes swaps, and workshops. Both arms are now largely self-sustaining. The model isn’t dependent on generosity and is designed to generate its own momentum.
That momentum now spans a network stretching from north of the Tyne into North Yorkshire and across to Teesdale, through partnerships with local authorities, businesses, community spaces, and grassroots groups. The problems the network is working against are not small ones.
Polluting plastic waste
UK households generate roughly 100kg of plastic waste per person every year. The fashion industry is one of the most polluting on the planet. Against those numbers, a refill van and a clothes swap can sound like small answers. But they aren’t. Ecologico’s refill service and Swish for Good clothes swap programme are among the few interventions that change behaviour at the point of everyday decision-making — and behaviour change, repeated across thousands of people, is how the numbers move.
Ruth’s household of six spends around £300 a month on food — package-free, through refill. Clothing for everyone, uniforms and shoes included, comes in under £1,000 a year through preloved swaps. Hiring a party kit for the children’s birthday parties costs around £50 each. Reusable nappies eliminate what is otherwise one of the largest recurring costs for families with young children. Reusable menstrual products do the same. A reusable water bottle and beeswax wraps replace bottled water and cling film indefinitely. Cleaning products are made at home for around £100 a year in raw ingredients.
Ruth compares her household’s spending against ONS data, which puts the average UK household spend at roughly £600–£700 per week. Her family of six comes in substantially below that figure. The difference, by a cautious estimate, amounts to around £20,000 a year, with significantly less waste to show for it. “The people we’re trying to reach aren’t necessarily driven by environmentalism at the start — they’re driven by affordability,” Ruth says. “They just realise the two can go hand in hand.”
Ecologico’s expansion into workplaces, care homes, schools, and charities is the next chapter of a story that started with £25 and a family’s shopping habits. The underlying argument has never changed: that sustainable living is not a premium lifestyle choice. It is, when the right infrastructure exists, simply the cheaper option. The van, the swaps, the borrowed party kit, the reusable nappies — none of these ask people to spend more for the planet’s sake. They ask people to spend less. The planet benefits anyway.
More about Ecologico pop-ups, party kit hire and refills are available here ecologicouk.com.
We learned about Ecologico’s work when they got in touch to tell us their story - does your business have an inspiring eco story to tell? Get in touch!
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