Refill Rewind
Pre-Industrial, Pre-Plastic explosion – People of the time almost always purchased in bulk, or by weight. There wasn’t an abundance of plastic to contain the items that you bought, it was glass, paper bags, rice bags and other reusable materials, refilling a container repeatedly wasn’t unheard of.
Then came an explosion of plastic post-WWII with industrial scaling – Cheap to manufacture from the fossil fuels the planet provides, plastic was a solution…. a solution in search of a problem.
Corporations knew they could manufacture and sell more product, regardless of if the product was good for you – plastic leaching wasn’t yet a known concern. Cheap plastic containers made this possible, easy to shape via molds, huge manufacturing plants were born just for the creation of these containers. Even with the well-reported, widespread plastic issues we see today, they remain cheap to produce and thus provide healthy margins for those huge corporations.
Milk is a prime example. Often it was locally farmed milk – Hand delivered right to your door in a glass bottle. The Milk Man or Lady – Would swap out your old milk bottle for a fresh one, re-washing and re-using the bottle. Once convenience culture hit, it became easier to grab a plastic milk jug from the grocery store – After-all, you get more milk and it was cheaper. Albeit, the milk might not be as fresh – and it might contain microplastics.
The recycling bin gets picked up now every week (city dependent), making it just as easy to buy a fresh jug and throw the old one in the recycling. What happens to it after that is anyone’s guess.
Refill Accountability
As we live and breathe together on this planet – We each have a duty of care for one another. Not just in being friendly to your neighbors, but to those who may live on a totally different continent – There have been reports of western recycling ending up on the shores of countries less fortunate, out of sight out of mind. Ocean life choking on plastic. Should we each take some blame for that? We should be looking within ourselves to be accountable for our actions when it comes to the abuse of plastic. Taking stock of what we can each do to slow down the use of plastic and perhaps even reverse course – not to the past, but to the mindset of reuse that once came naturally.
Refilleries take on some of this accountability – The service provided is that akin to the Milk model of yesteryear. Need dish soap? Have a container to put it? Why waste it? Why take a chance that it won’t get recycled the way you think it might?
Refilleries ask consumers to be part of a closed loop system – Taking on some of the onus of slowing down the abuse of plastic – But – are refilleries of today actually promoting healthy closed loop systems themselves?
*Not sure what a closed loop system is? – Read up on our FAQ here*
Promoting Sustainable Refilling
Consumers are relentless. Refilling should be regarded as a service. When we opened our refillery in the heart of Airdrie, Alberta, we opened it after extensive research into first and foremost, Canadian manufactured brands – Once we nailed those down, we asked each one: What accountability do you take in the refill journey?
Being a refillery shouldn’t be about bending to consumers’ relentless demands, especially when their favorite products arrive in bulk containers that can’t be returned for refilling.
Contributing to a problem that we’re out to solve is not the right answer. There has to be promotion of sustainable practices on all accounts. We’re asking consumers to be mindful of plastic waste – We should also be mindful of our own waste.
Is a refillery that just stocks what’s hot and selling, without any supply chain accountability, better than nothing? Is better than nothing good enough? Maybe. – We think refilling done right, with supply chain accountability, is the standard that the industry needs to hold itself to.
At Bobby’s Refillery we asked each of our suppliers to reduce packaging where possible, the exfoliating gloves from Wildpier typically come packaged in individual biodegradable plastic, we asked them to remove that step. For our liquid products, we work only with suppliers who can take our bulk containers back to be cleaned, refilled, and re-used (Eco-Company & The Bare Home). This is sustainable refilling, this is accountability and this is the solution to both a plastic waste and supply chain waste problem.
