[Chinese Packaging News] The Common Good store allows consumers to refill recyclable glass bottles (sold in stores) or bring their own empty bottles to refill with clean personal items.
Sometimes, sustainable packaging and environmentally friendly packaging materials have little to do with how we deal with products. For example, the bottled water industry has received a lot of criticism. When people drink the perfectly clean and sealed water, they waste a lot of unnecessary bottles. However, some communities and universities are working hard to reduce the waste of plastic water bottles by establishing refill sites. People no longer need to buy water bottles from vending machines. You can bring empty bottles and fill the water for free. This is a good start. Plastic water bottles are only part of the problem.
In general, disposable packaging is now the most common in retail stores. From water bottles to beverages to personal skin care products, cosmetics and cleaning products, all are disposable packages and then discarded. We hope that some packaging will be reused, although we also know that recycling is a challenge for consumers. But what if we take the idea of ​​repopulating the site and apply it to other liquid products?
In the past, beverage companies and other liquid product manufacturers used glass packaging, which may be the earliest form of reuse of packaging. The reason is that you must put your empty milk bottle in the doorway. The person who delivers the milk will come back tomorrow! The glass bottle is very durable, easy to clean, constantly refilled, and when the time comes (after repeated use), it can be recycled.
There are many different innovative companies that are breaking the limit and demonstrating that refilling sites is feasible. One of the companies is Green11, the headquarters of this store is in California, and there are many sites in the San Francisco Coast area. Green11 stores are called refills and their slogan is "refill, not landfill." The store offers many different environmentally friendly personal care products such as shampoos and shower gels, as well as laundry detergents and other household cleaning products. It wants to convey the idea that if consumers and retailers are refilling away from individually packaged products, we will greatly reduce packaging waste.
East Coast is a New York City company called COMMON GOOD. Although his headquarters is in New York, its products are sold in many places and even sold worldwide. The company sells reusable glass bottles that can refill their environmentally friendly products such as hand soaps, dish soaps, universal detergents and laundry detergents. Relying on this shop, you can use your own container.
Another company that wants to promote the concept of refilling is Replenish. The company realizes that most household cleaners are 90% water, and only 10% contain active cleansing ingredients. So, the company partnered with CleanPath to develop a product that transforms discarded cleaning product packaging into a reusable, waste-reducing product. It works by placing a "refillable small box" at the bottom of the product containing concentrated detergent. All you have to do is squeeze the detergent into the bottle and add water. A small box of detergent can soak three bottles.
Refilling sites without having to reduce prices or reduce the quality of liquid products can greatly reduce packaging waste, and few consumers rarely go to retail stores that have refilled sites. Buying products in bulk is a viable option, limiting the packaging necessary to provide greater value to consumers. To help consumers, a woman named Beatrice Johnson designed a smartphone app called Bulk. Consumers can use Bulk to find the nearest vending machines for bulk food and drinks, and they can share the latest stores with their friends.
However, it is not possible to have such a site or store around each company. Our company Zero Waste Boxes can be a viable idea to ensure that packaging waste is not landfilled. Recycling barriers are almost non-existent, because what consumers need to do is fill the boxes and send them back. There are many different types of boxes to choose from, some are specific waste streams and others are acceptable wastes that do not need to be classified. When reuse or filling cannot be achieved, recycling is the best way to handle the waste stream.
Because of the waste caused by non-recyclable packaging, it is a difficult task to reduce them, but it is also possible to implement these different refilling processes across the United States. This is not to say that these ideas will reduce every packaging waste, but this is going in the right direction.