Zero Waste Week 2022 – Day One

Welcome to the fifteenth annual Zero Waste Week. This year is all about Refill and Reuse. Earlier this year, I was invited to investigate the state of play of Refill in the UK in 2022. It certainly seems like Refill is becoming more and more popular, particularly as we understand the need to control the flow of rubbish escaping into the environment and into our oceans. So it seemed an obvious topic to cover for this year’s Zero Waste Week. Reuse, which includes refill, of course, is towards the top of the Waste Hierarchy, above recycling. At the very top of the Waste Hierarchy is “Reduce” and refilling and reusing really helps to reduce our use of resources. That’s why Zero Wasters like me absolutely love it!

Zero Waste Week is about coming together with huge numbers of people to make the very difficult step of changing habits, a whole lot easier by doing it with other people. Being part of a good cause always feels great. It used to feel a bit “different”, “odd”, “wacky” being a person who cared about reducing waste, but thankfully after fifteen years of plugging the message we’re passionate about, we’re starting to see a new normal.

Even people who are still creating a lot of waste, kind of know deep down, that it is something they should be doing less of. We all know now that it is important to make better use of the world’s resources and that we need to act responsibly and make sure we have a healthy planet to hand on to future generations.

So, why Refill this year?

It is widely acknowledged that we’ve got to a stage of over using packaging. We’re consuming more than ever, often in a mindless way because of habits we’ve built up. Packaging has its uses and it isn’t “packaging” that’s the problem, it is what we do with that packaging that is causing the problems.

There’s so much information about plastics in our oceans. We can drive down any main road and look out of the window to see litter strewn on our streets and in our countryside. The last time I went on a beach clean, I barely made it to the beach for all the litter in the car park.

We’re talking rubbish here! A lot of rubbish… and it is the rubbish that’s got to stop. But what’s the connection between Rubbish and Refill? That’s what this week will be all about. We’re going to encourage people to reduce rubbish, and reduce resources we don’t need, by switching to the Refill Habit. Welcome to the “Refill Revolution”!

There will be people reading this post today who’ve been on a journey to cut down their waste since Rachelle first began her Zero Waste Week journey. We hope there may be some new readers too and this year more than ever, we’re relying on millions of organisations, big and small to help the campaign by sharing the Refill and Reuse message. Whether you’ve been on the Zero Waste journey for a while or you are just stepping out on the path, welcome.

Day One Challenge

We focus our campaign around small steps and a daily challenge. We’re going to start with something that’s already become a really popular habit and those on the journey for a while are pretty much bound to have already mastered.

Our challenge today is to start at the beginning of the Refill journey with coffee cups, lunch boxes and water bottles.

If you regularly use a Refillable coffee cup and water bottle or you take a homemade packed lunch when you go out and about your challenge today is to encourage others to do the same and share the story of your trusty reusable coffee cup/lunch box or water bottle and I’ll share mine.

But first…

If you’re not yet part of the Refill Revolution, we absolutely don’t want you to buy a reusable coffee cup or reusable water bottle. Read on and we’ll suggest what to do instead. And please ignore any and all organisations that say, “Hey! It is Zero Waste Week, get your Zero Waste lunch kit here!” No one needs to go out and buy anything. Instead, we all need to understand something very important about reusable products versus disposables.

Disposable products are generally designed to minimise the use of materials. That’s great, but the problem comes when we use billions of disposables on a regular basis, because it adds up to a lot of material, a lot of carbon footprint and a lot of waste. Reusable products are (hopefully) built to last. That usually means that the product requires more material than something designed to be used once and thrown away and it will most likely have a higher carbon footprint. The beauty of Refillable/ Reusable products is when that one product replaces tens, hundred, thousands or collectively billions of the single-use counterpart. There’s no easy answer to how many times you need to use a reusable product to make it worth the additional carbon footprint compared to disposables.You’ll see statistics ranging from just 2 uses (for products that are pretty much the same design and quality as the single-use equivalent – like a plastic take-away container – loved by refillers around the world. But equally, you’ll see statistics that suggest the need for over a hundred uses required as a break even point.

We’ll be looking at this in more detail later this week. For today, let’s just remember that we need to reuse our reusables and not treat them like better quality, higher carbon footprint disposables. If you don’t have a reusable cup/water bottle or lunchbox, try before you buy (and hopefully forget about buying altogether!)! Borrow a spare one from friends or family, someone you know is bound to have one they don’t use and not necessarily because it wasn’t good in the first place. Pick one up in a charity shop. Or repurpose something you already own. You don’t need a fancy lunchbox: that old take-away tub, your dad’s empty ice cream container or your grandma’s melamine mug she used to take on picnics before you were born will do just fine (but be mindful that it might not survive a microwave if it is a 1950s original).

And now with that in mind, here’s my reusables story…

I’m not an everyday out of the house coffee drinker, but my reusable coffee cup does travel with me almost everywhere I go. I’ve had it for nearly a decade and its number of uses must be already well over a hundred. The design of reusable coffee cups has probably improved greatly since I bought mine but it is certainly adequate and I love it!  Long may it live and continue to serve me. I’m confident it has helped me reduce my carbon footprint and reduce waste.

The same goes for my reusable water bottles. I rarely leave the house without one and I often refill it out and about during the day. Although I’ve only bought one water bottle myself twelve years ago – and I still use it frequently – I’ve owned five of them in those twelve years and only two of them are still in my possession. 

It seems to have become a trendy thing to do at meetings and conferences to give out reusable water bottles. Eight years ago, I thought this was a good idea. I was grateful to receive an aluminium water bottle at an environmental education conference. The conference organisers announced that there was no bottled water on site, that we could fill our reusable bottles at multiple taps around the conference site and we were all given a reusable bottle. It was hot and the water bottle did keep my water cool for longer than the plastic one I already owned and had brought with me. On my return journey I was glad to have both water bottles with me. I was sad when my husband borrowed my water bottle, dropped it. Yes, sad, but not as sad as he was. He still used it until one day it leaked all over his laptop. Ouch! That was an expensive carbon footprint.

A year or so later (2017), I was given a very lovely looking glass water bottle, complete with an insulating jacket, when on a visit to the European Parliament in Brussels. We were given a guided tour before the meeting and as part of our tour we were shown the recently installed water fountains and taps around the building as it was explained that they wanted to reduce the number of single-use plastic water bottles consumed and disposed of on the premises. I took my new water bottle home and it sat in the cupboard for a while. Then my husband acquired it and it got a good bit of use. But again, eventually it was dropped and smashed. Fortunately not near a laptop.

Water bottle number four, I have no idea where it came from. It was plastic, solid, unbreakable, dishwasher safe and easy to clean. I can’t remember where I acquired it but I know how I lost it. I left it on a bench at a station just shortly before lock-down. I was very glad that I had my trusty original water bottle too – it really was a two water bottle train journey. I acquired bottle number four at my destination, where fortunately, for me, someone had abandoned a similar but slightly smaller version of trusty original, which I have to this day and hopefully trusty original and trusty sidekick will keep me hydrated for many years to come!

Overall, I think my personal carbon footprint of reusable water bottles is still pretty low. However, the way we use our reusables is an area worthy of consideration. Water bottles need to be unbreakable, leakproof, easily washed and we don’t need hundreds of them in our lives.

It is so “last decade” to give out reusable water bottles at events. Instead, consider a cup-hire scheme, where people who have forgotten their water bottle can pay a deposit for a reusable cup and get the money back when they return it at the end of the meeting/visit/conference. Same for coffee cups. These days, you don’t even need to do the washing up, as the cups can be returned dirty and that means the cleaning is optimised by the hire company.

Remember, reusables are not a higher carbon footprint throwaway object. They are not collectors’ items where you get one from every venue you’ve ever been, stuff them in the cupboard and forget about them! They are your lifelong friends and you’ll build a story together. What’s your story?