BioProducts Institute (BPI)
ja-consumerspeak
Alexandra Stuthridge, Technical Business Manager, BioProducts Institute (BPI)

One-stop bulk bought tissue is transported by boat – The Hangover – across Lake Harrison in British Columbia to her thriving home and business. Coleen Brown shares a glimpse of her beautiful lifestyle.

We live on the edge of Lake Harrison in British Columbia, Canada, directly adjacent to the lakeshore. Our home is there, as well as the Tree House, a log cabin that we opened up as a guest house in 2016.

It’s very peaceful, quiet and off-grid. Both homes are only accessible by boat from Harrison’s Public Dock, and our neighbours are Mount Cheam, coastal forests, our boat (“The Hangover”) and the beautiful Harrison Village skyline.

As there are no roads or vehicle access points, and as we run a guest house, when we do buy tissue supplies for the properties we stock up and plan the trip so it is as cost-effective as possible.

Treehouse Harrison buys the majority of our tissue products at Costco. It’s the closest large supermarket to us and makes sense as it’s a one-stop for all of our needs. We can buy in bulk there to share between the two homes. The tissue products I mainly use and buy in bulk are Purex toilet paper, Kirkland paper towel and Scotties Kleenex.

I’ve designed the Tree House so it’s as environmentally-friendly as possible, and where possible the products that we use here are also green products.

That principal was important from the start and applied to everything.

When we started to construct it the first phase was to build a concrete base for the future cabin. All the building materials had to be barged in and unloaded by hand. The principal utilities are now managed by a combination of eco-friendly solar power, propane appliances and a back-up generator, which we use for heating the hot water on-demand for the outdoor hot tubs and outdoor showers.

All the interior cedar finishing was milled from a local family heritage property and the log cabin structure was pre-fabricated in nearby Popkum BC and then barged to the property, so that we could be as much a part of our natural surroundings as possible.

We transport all the products on The Hangover across Harrison Lake, which is about a 10-minute boat trip. I keep a ready stock of everything… toilet paper, kitchen towel, wet wipes, makeup wipes, etc. We have outdoor toilets as well as inside the cabin, and the kitchen is also stocked with kitchen towels and wet wipes which we use for spillages and also for cleaning the fireplace, wiping up spills on the boat, the canoes, etc.

I like to buy good quality products to keep Treehouse Harrison a 5-star rating.

Coleen’s Tree House can be found at: www.Treehouse-Harrison.com