Zero Waste Week 2022 – Day Five

So what’s the future for reusables? Do they even have a future?

Nothing is more certain than the fact we need to make better use of our planet’s resources. That’s not in any doubt. Cutting down waste is clearly a good place to start to achieve that. Reuse and refill has great potential for cutting down waste and making better use of resources.

Today we’re going to take a look at how exactly reusables can help with that and what the future of reusables needs to look like for it to really offer benefits to people and planet. How do we get reusables to be inclusive, cost effective, resource efficient and with a lower carbon footprint than the current system of single-use and disposables?

We can all see that reusable products and packaging are increasing in popularity. Most of us probably know that expression: ‘economy of scale’. The more we make of a product, the cheaper it becomes. Even though lots of people are switching to reusables, the whole essence of reusables is about having a world that makes fewer products. This totally disrupts the current system and consumer culture, which is based on making things cheaply and selling huge quantities – a culture that uses a lot of resources and creates a lot of waste.

Reusables are designed to make better use of resources and create less waste. We need to be aware that switching to reusables is a switch in mindset, both for businesses and for consumers.

When making reusables they need to be made to last, in a way that they can be repaired or reprocessed, so there’s service and after-care to consider. The purchase price plus the service/after-care costs need to reflect the lifespan of the product and be equivalent to or less than the cost of single-use/disposable products over the same period of time.

This means that as consumers, we need to shift our thinking to look beyond the one off purchase price of reusables compared to disposables and always think of the cost per use instead.

If more people can do this, then maybe more people will accept a switch to reusables and that will in turn bring economies of scale. Though we always need to remember we’re never going to sell as many units of a reusable product than its single-use counterpart. If we are doing so, and that’s where we could perhaps say #rememberthebags, something is seriously wrong.

Number one, then, on my list of what needs to happen for a reusable future is we need more people taking up the culture of reuse and refill.

Reusable products

There’s always a break-even point in terms of reusable products compared to disposables when there’s a necessary increase in quality needed over single-use. You might have a product that’s twice the carbon footprint of its single-use counterpart because of the extra or higher carbon footprint materials needed to make them. That means from its third use you’re making carbon footprint savings.

I confess I didn’t even investigate the actual carbon footprint savings of my washable sanitary pads all those years ago when I bought them, but given the amount of use such products get, the money you’ll save is huge, as well as avoiding a mountain of waste. They will probably last a menstruating lifetime for an investment of between £15 and  £45. I can vouch for 15 years use which would have cost me several hundred pounds in single-use products. 

The great thing is, reusable products are almost always a no-brainer if you are reusing them and they are not just sitting in your cupboard. The savings, in money and in carbon footprint mount up from every use past the magical break-even point.

From nappies, sanitary products, hankies and razors, through to shopping bags, coffee cups, water bottles and lunch boxes, there are a myriad of reusable products you can opt for instead of single-use disposables. 

Maybe these things make the perfect gift for someone, but be careful! Reusable products as gifts are great as long as they are 1) wanted – i.e. the recipient will actually use the product and 2) needed i.e. they haven’t got one (or several) already. 

What we do need, is for you to flaunt your reusables. Show off your water bottle, your coffee cup, your lovely shopping bag. And yeah, you can flaunt those pretty sanitary pads even – go on, hang them proudly on your washing line, like colourful bunting. What I want to see is people showing off their reusables everywhere, so much that people feel embarrassed carrying a single-use water bottle or disposable coffee cup and feel they have to go into hiding to drink from it because they are just so uncool. This is really what’s going to bring about the change in culture that we need to see.

Have you noticed, we don’t see cool tv characters smoking any more. We need the same cultural shift to happen with food on the go, whereby we never see a character on tv or in films walking about carrying take-out coffee in disposable cups. Let’s change that image so film companies know clearly that cool society would now be carrying four clearly recognisable reusables if they are doing the coffee run.

Grocery Shopping

When we turn to refillable packaging for our grocery shopping this is where the really big and hugely important resource/carbon footprint savings come in. It is much more than just reducing packaging waste, though, that is a great thing in itself.

Strangely, one of the reasons why people think shopping in Refill is a bad thing, is the very magic that makes it great. The secret benefit, that makes it better for your bank balance overall, as well as reducing your packaging waste is essentially reducing your food waste. This in turn reduces costs for your local council and reduces your carbon footprint.

Why?

Because… shopping has become quite a mindless task for many people. It doesn’t occupy much brain space and as a result we often buy way more than we actually need. This means we’re either using stuff when maybe it is past its best, or maybe not using it at all. 

We desperately need to reduce the amount of food we waste. That’s a topic we’ve covered many times in the history of Zero Waste Week. People working in the field of food waste reduction (like me!) say “Plan your meals”,”Go shopping in your fridge and freezer first”,”Make a shopping list.” But do you? Or do you arrive at the shops, hopefully at least with your reusable carrier bags because you keep them in your handbag or in your car, with only a vague notion of what you’re going to buy?

When you shop mostly in Refill, you generally need to plan before you arrive at the shops. You need to have the containers that you are going to refill with you. Experienced refill shoppers have many different ways of doing this.

I have a particular bag that is my main shopping bag.  It hangs in the kitchen. Like most people, there are some things – store cupboard items – that I always want to have in stock – rice, pasta, oats, lentils, flour, dried fruit, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices. Whenever I use the last of one of those items, I put the empty container straight into the shopping bag.

 

When I go shopping, I only need to look in my bag and I know what I need to buy. I supplement my refill shopping with seasonal veg from a farm shop or market – I know, I’m lucky to have access to these. But even trying to pick up fruit and veg from the supermarket that’s unpackaged – as long as it is the stuff you actually eat – is a more mindful shopping experience than grabbing bags of pre-packed produce. If you have to pick up every carrot, you are more likely to pick up the right number of carrots. 

Shopping this way has cut down the amount of stuff I buy. So it’s cut down the amount of money I spend. And of course, it has cut down the amount of food I waste. To me, mindful consumption is the way forward. 

Refill for our Future 

How do we get refill and reuse to be the way forward? There are, of course, lots of changes we need to make in our business set-up to bring refill into mainstream life, where you always expect something to be reusable and need to be returned.

It has to become the easiest option for most people, if we are really going to reduce our consumption and our reliance on packaging and then reduce the leakage into the environment of all the litter. Of course, it has to become widely accessible too. We all know it isn’t worth getting in our cars and driving extra miles so we can refill our own containers rather than buying the nearest packaged supermarket offer. Don’t worry! If you’re going anyway, grab that refill while you are there.

There’s a lot of infrastructure needed to make an accessible, easy to use, nationwide refill and reuse system, whether that’s for food and drink on the go, or for our grocery shopping. Businesses have to change, consumer behaviour has to change. It is a chicken and egg situation. One won’t change easily without the other and refill is never going to be as efficient as our wasteful plastic wrapped single-use culture until millions of us are choosing to refill, not just you – our zero heroes – and me.

If there’s one thing that will make refill a successful part of our day-to-day culture, it is seeing it being done, by everybody, everywhere. So, onto our final challenge for Zero Waste Week. Show people you Refill.

Day five challenge

Share your refill journey!

You can share it by telling people about what you refill and where and why it is good, but better still, why not offer to pick something up for someone while you’re refilling.

It is a regular on the Pitt family WhatsApp: “Does anyone need anything from Ripple?” (Cardiff contingent). “Any orders for Wast0?” (Witney contingent). It ups the sales at the small Zero Waste outlets we want to support and it means we’re less likely to run out, if it isn’t just down to one person to get the shopping.

Let’s spread this to our friends, to the office, the local Facebook group for your street, the school playground. Tell people about delicious products you bought in a particular refill store, offer to get some for them next time you go.  If you found a bargain, share the joy. We need to be seen to be refilling, we need to bust the myth that it is only something for posh people and hippies. It’s not a fad, it’s the future.

 

If we want a future..

The future is reusable!