Powering the Reuse Revolution

Reuse – the transformative solution

The issue of plastic pollution needs no introduction. The plastics crisis can be seen on our screens and on our streets, in our oceans and in our landfills, in the air we breathe and in the food we eat. This has been driven in no small part by single-use plastic food packaging. Something that does, however, need a better introduction, is what we mean when we talk about reuse – something that we champion at City to Sea across all of our work.

We currently consume 1.75 times more resources each year than the Earth can naturally regenerate. And we’re on course to more than double resource use by 2050. With only 9% of global plastic waste actually being recycled, managing waste once it’s generated is not going to solve our plastic crisis. Investment and growth of reuse systems is going to be critical to driving the transition away from our current disposable single-use culture.

Amongst progressive businesses, governments and NGOs, there is now consensus on the importance of moving our economy from the current linear ‘take, make, dispose’ model to a circular economy that designs waste out of the system and values and retains our natural resources. Reuse systems offers a transformative solution to single-use packaging by reducing virgin material use, retaining packaging in the economy, diverting waste packaging away from landfill and incineration, and reducing pollution and emissions.

Refill & Reuse models explained

Refill on-the-go:

Here at City to Sea, we’ve been working hard for the last few years to make Refill on-the-go options more accessible and affordable through our Refill campaign and app. This maps hundreds of thousands of places customers can eat, drink and shop with less plastic. In this “Refill on-the-go” system, customers would carry their reusable containers and refill them when they are out and about. This could be as simple as a water bottle from a fountain or a food staple from an in-store dispensing system.

Refill at home:

Refill from the convenience of your own home! What could be better? This model allows customers to refill their reusable containers at home. This could be for example using concentrated cleaning products that need watering down.

Return from home:

This model is easy to understand for most Brits as it conjures an image long held in our society. It’s the modern-day equivalent of a milkman walking up your street to drop off a product (the milk) to your door in reusable bottles while picking up the empty bottles you’ve left out. This type of ‘return from home’ model has been growing substantially and there are now a number of retailers offering home delivery services for everything from milk to dried goods and groceries. Milk and More for example have partnered with both Good Club and Again to offer a wide-range of products from shampoo to porridge oats in reusable packaging all delivered and collected from your door.

Return on-the-go:

Users return the packaging at a store or drop-off point (e.g. in a deposit return machine or a mailbox).

This model encourages people – normally economically through a deposit system – to return the packaging at a store or drop-off point. All over Europe this has become normalised through “reverse vending machines” that can scan returned packaging. While this model is used mainly to drive up recycling rates, it can also be used to encourage reuse. In Denmark for example, about a quarter of marked containers are returnable/reusable.

For most shoppers this means you remove any messy or difficult “refilling” process in store and instead, like the refill at home model, companies “prefill” the containers in factory settings before they reach the retail outlet.

At City to Sea, we’re working with industry experts to explore and trial return options in the retail environment. These options overcome many of the barriers experienced by consumers when it comes to self-refills such as needing to remember your own container, the perceived messiness and also hygiene concerns.

We’ve also launched our very own, return on-the-go system for hot drinks in our home city of Bristol. The Refill Return Cup enables consumers to get their coffee on-the-go in a reusable cup (free of charge) which they then drop off at a drop off point in multiple cafes across the city when they’re finished. This type of borrow-and-return system has the potential to reduce millions of pieces of packaging every year by tackling the mountains of waste we create when eating and drinking on-the-go.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

‘Reuse’ is the second of the 3 ‘R’s (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) and in the context of the waste hierarchy, should be prioritised over recycling. Despite this, investment remains low and recycling is still seen as the solution by many businesses and governments – something that is encouraged by big brands.

Reuse solutions prevent waste upstream and are therefore fundamentally different from so-called downstream solutions, such as recycling, incineration, or disposal. Downstream solutions deal with waste once it has been generated by the system.

Recycling is not the answer. While recycling plays a crucial role in waste management and we need to scale up our recycling systems, that alone cannot solve the plastic crisis. The current scale of plastic production and consumption far exceeds the capacity of recycling facilities, leading to a significant portion of plastic waste ending up in landfills or incinerated.

We need to reduce the amount we produce instead of trying to recycle more. It’s also worth remembering that not all plastics are recyclable, and many are downcycled into lower-quality products with limited market demand, ultimately ending up as waste. Lastly, recycling comes with an eco-cost. The recycling process itself consumes energy and resources, contributing to carbon emissions and environmental impacts. And this is just the theory of why it isn’t the answer. In reality, recycling is highly flawed as a result of inadequate infrastructure, inconsistent recycling practices, and low consumer participation rates.

System change not consumer change 

So far reusable solutions have focused on radically changing consumer behaviour and imposing on consumers a level of inconvenience and effort corporations have for decades led consumers to not expect. For reuse to work we need to make it as convenient for the consumer as single use and that means that the effort needs to be put in by the corporations who created the expectation of convenience.  To genuinely reduce single use waste we need a system that consumers will and can adopt and which works with existing retail structures. 

We believe to truly change the system, we need governments to create and reinforce meaningful legislation and businesses to be held to account. Whilst we as citizens and consumers do have an important role to play, there needs to be less focus on dealing with plastic as an individual consumer issue and the real polluters – the big brands and businesses need to be held responsible for cleaning up their act!   

We need an end to corporates buying too much stock and then encouraging us to buy things we don’t need via sales and Black Friday. We need an end to corporates promoting more and more “seasons”, constantly trying to persuade us that things in our home are no longer in vogue, that our clothes and furnishings are out-of-fashion. It’s corporate behaviour that has created the single use system and we need to change that system – so it’s the corporates that need to change. 

Government support for a reuse systems 

We are calling on the government, grant funders and corporates to start directing funds, effort and legislation into supporting a true reuse system. And that requires a change in the system and corporate behaviour, not a change in consumer behaviour. 

We need the Government to stop tinkering with measures that create tiny insignificant changes and tackle single use waste in the way they finally tackled smoking, helping to make our public spaces litter free as well as smoke free.  That requires putting in place systems which significantly disincentivise single-use and makes reuse a convenient and viable option for both businesses and consumers.