The Refill Coalition aims to take reuse and refill mainstream

A UK-based group called The Refill Coalition is doing what it can to reduce single-use packaging through an initiative that involves installing reusable bulk vessels for key food staples, starting with some select Aldi grocery stores in England. The venture is being led by GoUnpackaged, the UK’s leading reuse and refill experts, with involvement from supply chain solutions company CHEP. Innovate UK’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging (SSPP) fund is supporting the live trials.

Plastics molding giant Berry Global Inc. developed and produced a customized, 14-liter HDPE reusable container for the project. It is designed to deliver refills at scale for key food staples (such as cereals and pasta) and household products (such as cleaning and personal-care products), including liquids. In doing so, it drives efficiencies and eliminates the need for single-use plastic packaging when moving goods from supplier to customer. 

This, says the 4-year-old coalition, allows retailers to sell refill products at a cheaper price than their packaged equivalents – all customers need to do is bring their own containers.

There is strong customer appetite for alternative choices when it comes to packaging. Research shows that 67 to 85 percent of UK adults would try refilling if it was available in a mainstream supermarket, across all demographics, spend profiles and locations; and 73 percent of those who shop online. While supermarkets have done much to reduce plastic packaging, Greenpeace estimates that at least 56.5 billion units of single-use plastic packaging are sold by the UK grocery market each year.

• An in-store refill system for dry goods (which launched last fall with Aldi UK, the nation’s fourth-largest supermarket chain)
• A tareless weighing system and liquids dispense, in development for launch this year. (“Tareless” means that consumers don’t have to weigh their own container before refilling it.)
• A soon-to-launch bulk home-delivery refill solution.

Catherine Conway, director and reuse lead for GoUnpackaged, said by email on April 29 that Ocado Retail Ltd. plans to launch its pilot program in 2024’s second quarter. Ocado, a joint venture between Marks & Spencer Group and Ocado Group, aims to be the biggest online grocer in the UK.

The Refill Coalition explains that its in-store solution will replace current bulk dispensers with reusable vessels located at a refill station that can be filled and shipped with the product. The store can invite customers to bring their own packaging to refill at the station, using an improved easy weighing system. Each reusable vessel replaces 24 single-use plastic packs (based on 500 grams of rice). A video on this page shows how the system works.

The supplier pre-fills the online consumer-sized vessel with product and ships it to customers alongside the rest of their Ocado order. The vessel is then returned to the Ocado driver when empty. Each consumer-sized vessel replaces five single-use plastic packs (again based on a 500-gram pack of rice).

One of the keys to making this in-store system work involves the use of a standardised bulk reusable vessel designed to be optimized for the supply chain. Enter Berry Global.  

The Evansville, Ind.-based packaging giant said it created a solution to a very specific brief. The vessel’s angled shoulder design ensures that all product is evacuated during refilling by consumers. A divorced carry handle prevents product from entering and becoming trapped inside the handle and facilitates easy cleaning while providing ease of use throughout the distribution chain. The design also allows the incorporation of an RFID chip, QR code or similar device for tracking and product management. 

Berry says it selected HDPE in part because the resin’s “robustness and durability [make it] suitable to withstand the repeated washing and distribution process to deliver the multiple uses required for the refill operation.”

While the monolayer construction – which facilitates recycling at the container’s eventual end of life – is currently in virgin HDPE, the Refill Coalition has indicated it plans to introduce post-consumer recycled (PCR) content into the container, which will support supply-chain compliance with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requirements.

Berry said its technical skills were also critical to the successful development of the vessel. The angled neck shape required specialist in-mold cutting to create the opening in the container, a procedure that for more traditional shapes would normally be carried out after molding.

The company says it also has developed a customized vessel for the bulk home-delivery refill solution to be used by Ocado Retail in its online business. That is a 3-liter version of the container designed to fit into the delivery crates used by online grocer. Those vessels come in two different neck sizes – 60 mm and 80 mm – with Berry also supplying the closures. This will allow there to be separate containers for dry and liquid products.

The Refill Coalition says that refills provide an answer to the need to tackle single-use packaging waste. If every household in the UK refilled just one item per week, the group estimates, this would eliminate more 1.4 billion single-use packs in a year (based on 2022 government statistics showing 28.2 million households in the UK.) 

“Plastics’ versatility has been critical to the success of this project,” said Edward Arnold, who has coordinated the project for Berry with its customer CHEP.

“We have been able to select a polymer that has the robustness for multiple reuse, while providing a lightweight solution for easy handling and to minimize the carbon impact of transportation. Equally important, plastic has the design flexibility to create two specific and totally different designs for both refill systems.”

Katrin Zeiler, CHEP’s senior director of zero waste world and customer innovation and solutions in Europe,  says her firm’s business “is defined by our sustainable circular economy model of sharing and reuse. The pilot represents our commitment to redefining industry standards, reducing single-use packaging and fostering a regenerative supply chain to contribute to our sustainability goals.”

The Refill Coalition is currently running pilot programs at Aldi stores in both Solihull and Leamington Spa in central England.

Luke Emery, Aldi’s plastics and packaging director, said at the launch of the initial trial last fall: “We are pleased to have installed the first in-store refill solution as part of the Refill Coalition in our Solihull store. We are continuing our work to reduce single-use plastics and packaging, and making unpackaged product options more commonplace for our customers is a key part of this.”