When will refills hit the mainstream?

Yesterday I wrote about Britain’s long-awaited national standards for recycling, which will hopefully put recycling targets back on track from 2026 onwards. Those are good and necessary, but one thing that they don’t do is help to reduce plastic use in the first place. We’ll divert more packaging from incineration and towards recycling, but we’ll still have the same amount of plastic to deal with.

So here’s another solution we’ve been waiting a long time for that may have also taken a step in the right direction this month: refills.

One of the most obvious ways to reduce packaging is to sell basic goods without it, and let shoppers use refills. So far it’s mainly been independent and specialised refill shops that have done that, with brief and limited trials by some of the larger supermarkets. There are more of them out there then there used to be, but it hasn’t quite caught on yet.

There are a number of reasons why. It’s possible that shoppers don’t want it, even if two thirds of us say we do. It’s inconvenient to remember the containers, and takes longer to buy refills than to grab a packet off a shelf. Shopping trips become longer and more involved, and you often have to pay more for refills than new packets (though this is not inevitable). With no saving and more work, why bother?

It’s also a challenge for the retailer. Refill stations take up more space in-store. They need to keep those stations stocked and supervised, and clean up if somebody gets it wrong and makes a mess. Customers have to be able weigh their goods and price things properly, and of course you need to just weigh the product and not the container. It’s all a bit too much hassle for big companies whose only real commitment is to their shareholder value.

A group called The Refill Coalition launched a possible answer last week, and it’s the same one that I was writing about yesterday: standards. The whole idea of refills becomes much more feasible if everyone agrees to use the same system. They’ve developed a bulk container that producers can use to supply dry goods or liquids. They send them to the supermarkets, who plug them into a standardised refill station. When the containers are empty, they are returned to be cleaned and re-used. This is a refill system for the supply chain, before we ever get to the consumer.

There’s also a smaller standard container for online shopping. Order a refill of rice, pasta or some other basic, and it will come in a large plastic tub. When you’ve used it up, you can return the empty to the delivery driver on their next visit. It will be cleaned and refilled and sent out again.

The coalition’s solution is open source, so anyone can use this system. That encourages more suppliers to give it a go, and more retailers to invest in refills. A widely recognised standardised system delivers predictability for retailers, familiarity for consumers, and economies of scale for producers. It’s the kind of thing we need to make refills normal – something that will be important in reducing plastic use and creating a circular economy.

After working on it since 2020, the coalition’s system has been installed in just one Aldi store in Solihull as an initial pilot. Ocado will then trial the online shopping version. Both firms are committed to rolling out the system across all their stores if it’s successful, and others are keeping an eye on their work. Including me, as I would happily use such a system as and when it becomes available.

• See GoUnpackaged for more.