It usually fell to the children to put out glass milk bottles at the letterbox. We dropped coins into them as payment, and later, to foil petty thieves, tokens bought from the dairy. The milkman (or sometimes woman) drove the truck around every street as fit teenagers ran alongside, swapping full bottles for clean empties that local bottling plants sanitised and refilled.
Then in 1986, supermarkets were allowed to sell milk for the first time and it came in cartons then plastic bottles, just like we’d seen on American TV programmes. Environmentalists were horrified by the prospect of so much plastic waste and launched a Save Our Milk Bottles campaign, but they lost. “It’ll put the milkmen out of business,” people said, and it did.
Today, there’s a resurgence of small dairy businesses selling milk in reusable glass bottles at farmers’ markets, small shops, in dispensers or by old-fashioned home delivery. For beer, the century-old Swappa Crate system lives on. Customers pay a deposit on a crate of a dozen beer bottles and return the empties for a discount on the next crate.
These are examples of reusable packaging – a system of buying consumables prepacked into durable containers that are collected, cleaned and reused repeatedly for the same purpose. Its environmental credentials are far better than those of single-use packaging, and its potential extends to other beverages, food, cleaning and personal care items.
Modern reusable packaging systems are stuttering forth now, fuelled in Europe by policies that promote them and perhaps by a pending global treaty to end plastic pollution. In Aotearoa, packaging has been made more easily recyclable – but recycling doesn’t move the dial, says the United Nations Environment Programme’s executive director, Inger Andersen: “We will not recycle our way out of the plastic pollution crisis.”
Hannah Blumhardt, co-founder and lead researcher of social enterprise Reuse Aotearoa, agrees. “Addressing the packaging waste problem is not about trying to work out what to do with a single-use package once it’s created. It’s about developing better systems so we make less packaging in the first place.” Reuse is one such system.
Fresh thinking is needed because plastic production is predicted to treble in the next 40 years, despite growth in recycling. And recycling has its own environmental problems (see “A top-down approach”, below).
About 36% of all plastic is used for packaging, and packaging is by far the biggest single generator of plastic waste. Most (70%) is used in global food supply chains.
Tap and borrow
Mt Maunganui-based Again Again specialises in reusable packaging systems. It sells and rents lidded steel cups, bowls and containers to cafes, and craft breweries dispense beer into its glass beer flagons. Customers tap and go with an app to borrow cups or dishes, library-style. If they return the container at any Again Again-affiliated venue within two weeks, there’s no charge. “We seem like a coffee cup company,” says co-founder and CEO Nada Piatek, “but really we’re a tech company. We provide the infrastructure and the means to protect the investment businesses make in containers, so it’s cost neutral or profitable in the end.”
Reusable packaging could work in supermarkets, too. In the UK, shoppers at 25 Marks & Spencer stores can buy own-brand cleaning and laundry products in prefilled reusable packaging. The deposit they pay is refunded as a voucher when the packaging is returned to an in-store reverse vending machine. As with all reuse systems, it differs from a refill system as shoppers don’t have to remember to bring the packaging on each shopping trip and fill containers themselves. The containers are collected, cleaned and refilled by a company that specialises in returnable standardised packaging.
The “standardised” part matters. “Reuse works better with standardised packaging that all participating manufacturers use, because the reverse logistics [collecting, sanitising, redistributing] are far more efficient that way,” says Blumhardt. Brands differentiate themselves with labels.
Another UK supermarket chain, Tesco, also ventured into reusable packaging, offering more than 80 products in a trial. But brands were allowed bespoke packaging and Blumhardt thinks that’s a key reason the trial wasn’t financially viable.
Tesco remains enthusiastic about reuse, however. Its report on the trial says, “If all customers in our 10 pilot stores switched their ketchup, cola and washing-up liquid recyclable products to the reusable alternatives, reusable packaging would be used more than two and a half million times a year. If scaled up to more stores and more products, the potential reductions in plastic packaging can be vast. Reusable packaging gives us the biggest opportunity to transform our packaging environment.”
Measure the footprint
It’s worth comparing the environmental footprints of reusable and single-use packaging. It’s all made using raw materials, energy and water. A reusable stock initially has a bigger footprint than flimsier single-use equivalents, but with repeated use, it quickly shrinks. Unlike most recycling, it displaces the need for more to be made. “All the independent studies are consistent that reuse is an order of magnitude better from an environmental perspective,” says Piatek. Those figures take into account the repeated washing and transport of reusables.
Stainless-steel cups must be used 35 times to have a smaller footprint than paper or plastic cups, and for reusable polypropylene plastic it’s 10-20 times. When considering water alone, producing 500 single-use cups uses 1400 litres of water, whereas reusing one ceramic cup 500 times requires 200 litres of washing water.
These environmental benefits lie behind existing reuse schemes that extend beyond milk. In Aotearoa, Solid’s oral hygiene products and cosmetics from Emma Lewisham and Aleph Beauty come in packaging backed by reuse systems.
Beverages are sold on tap from reusable kegs in pubs, and from craft beer taprooms. Behind the scenes, you’ll find reusable pallets, crates and drums. Other companies offer a similar service to Again Again – Chunky in cafes, and event serveware providers including Fillgood and DISHrupt. Overseas, there’s bulk food dispenser Zeroo, Muuse (reusable containers), Recup & Rebowl, ReCircle, Club Zero and Vytal.
But it’s hard for such businesses to be financially viable. Tesco says, “We must find ways to give products in reusable packaging price parity with their single-use alternatives.” It’s calling for “well-designed government legislation to create a level playing field for retailers and manufacturers, to unleash innovation and change at scale … no single retailer or supplier can move the market alone.”
Costs transferred
What is this skew-whiff playing field? Blumhardt says it’s about the costs of a reusable system versus continually buying single-use packaging. “When all things are equal, reusable packaging systems cost society less overall than single-use packaging systems. But right now, companies that make and use single-use packaging aren’t paying all the costs. Taxpayers and ratepayers pay for single-use packaging to be collected, recycled or landfilled.”
Auckland ratepayers, for example, pay about $39 million annually for household recycling collection and processing, and central government announced in 2020 spending of $37.6m to upgrade recycling plants. “This is effectively a subsidy that makes single-use more commercially attractive for businesses,” says Blumhardt. “In contrast, reuse companies internalise their costs. They aren’t just buying the packaging, they’re also paying for it to be collected and freighted back to them, labour for washing, admin to organise all this, plus upfront investment in the necessary infrastructure.”
She says a level playing field would involve the government supporting reusable packaging logistics as it does with waste management, and for companies choosing to use single-use packaging to cover the costs of its collection and recycling or disposal. “That would seriously change the cost dynamic.”
Inadequate scale and no helpful legislation meant Kiwi enterprise Reusabowl failed to thrive. It launched in 2019 with a model of restaurant customers getting takeaway meals in a lidded reusable bowl for a $10 deposit that was refunded upon return. Revenue came from restaurants paying a subscription fee that cost less than continually buying single-use packaging. Or it would have if uptake had been sufficient.
“People didn’t want to deposit $10 to eliminate a piece of waste, even though they would get it back,” says co-founder Bobby Lloyd. “Public perception is way behind.” So, from 2022, Reusabowl instead sold its containers to corporate offices wanting to meet sustainability targets. But without recurring revenue, the company folded last year.
“We need policy to incentivise reuse and shift the responsibility away from consumers and onto producers,” says Lloyd. One option might be to make single use more expensive for the producer or the business buying it. “That way, a restaurant-based system might work.”
In the UK and European Union, businesses will soon pay for packaging they supply or import under Extended Producer Responsibility schemes. Here, 25 businesses have signed a Plastic Packaging Declaration committing them to using 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable packaging in New Zealand by 2025. They include Woolworths, Foodstuffs, Fonterra, Z Energy and Nestlé.
But business-to-consumer reuse systems among the signatories are scarce to absent: Emma Lewisham encourages its skincare customers to post back packaging for reuse, and Lion still uses kegs and Swappa Crates.
Lion’s share
The crates and big bottles are owned by the Associated Bottlers Company Ltd, which distributes the returned bottles to Lion and DB for cleaning and refilling. About 90% of packaged beer came this way in the 1970s, but today it’s 5%. “Most people buy a dozen 330ml bottles,” says John Steiner, Lion’s accelerated change director. If those bottles are collected, they’re melted in extremely hot furnaces to make new glass. The heat comes from fossil gas, which is a key reason why recycling glass is more environmentally taxing than reusing it.
So Lion has a long-term plan. It has been testing and tweaking a system of returnable crates of the smaller bottles. But, Steiner says, to introduce a new system, “there are lots of challenges, one of which is that big businesses are set up to be big, and it’s hard to do something small. To have an impact, you have to get return and reuse working at scale.”
Lion started small with Havana Coffee Works, which it bought in 2018. “New Zealanders throw away something like 295 million coffee cups each year,” says Steiner. “We saw a problem and reusable cups seemed like a good solution. We came across Again Again, which had a system that would make it easier for customers and cafes – it’s got to be advantageous for consumers; it can’t make it harder or more expensive, and it’s the same for cafes.”
Lion paid for Havana’s fleet of Again Again reusable cups and a marketing campaign to entice customers to borrow one.
“We helped reduce some of the barriers and helped make it commercially viable,” says Steiner.
“We can afford to experiment and not get things right the first time on a smaller scale – and things are never always right the first time. The cost of failure and lost opportunity on a large scale would be monumental.
“But we believe that investing in this area is the right thing to do, and if you don’t start, it will never happen. And I really think it could be a viable business model for us, although there’s still a lot to work through.”
Again Again also helps other industries plan a reusable packaging transition.
“We want to create opportunities for an entire new business model that’s eye-wateringly large,” says Piatek.
“Five years ago, we were these crazy waste warrior hippies. Now, businesses want to be in on it because they can see that some of their revenue will be disrupted if they aren’t.”
Change or miss out
Piatek says exporters reading international market trends see that they will have to get plastic out of their supply Chain to continue to participate. “If you’re not part of that system, you’ll miss out.”
She won’t give names but says her company is working with horticulture and beverage exporters selling into the Asian market. China is the world’s biggest generator of plastic waste, but it’s concerned about plastic pollution and is taking action accordingly.
Piatek suspects countries will exert pressure by making single-use plastic ever more expensive. She says exporters want to risk-manage that. Different players within the same industry – including packaging companies – are working with Again Again to design reuse systems collaboratively because it’s too hard to do it alone.
“Almost none of them know where to start. It really is a big gnarly infrastructure and behaviour change problem.”
The European Union recently reached a provisional agreement that would mandate reusables and a beverage-container return scheme by 2030.
New Zealand’s planned Container Return Scheme was cancelled last year. Its intention, according to the Ministry for the Environment, was to shift recycling costs away from ratepayers to those responsible for the supply chain and the product’s life cycle (ie, manufacturers, beverage producers, retailers and consumers). It would have added a deposit of perhaps 20 cents to the price of a bottle of drink, to be refunded when the bottle was returned to a drop-off point. But the plan was to recycle rather than reuse the bottles, despite some beverage manufacturers, such as Chia Sisters, calling for a centralised reuse system.
The scheme exempted reusable bottles, but Blumhardt saw benefits to including them in some way. “One of the benefits of participating is getting access to the nationwide container collection and return network. It’s all very well to put something in a theoretically reusable container, but getting it back can be a nightmare – an organised system for returns can help with that.”
On the flipside, an exemption would have required an official definition of “reusable” to prove bottles were being cleaned and reused. “We need standards so we understand what reusable packaging is and what best practice looks like,” she says. Detailed international standards are being developed, which could also inform related legislation, such as sanitising requirements.
Reuse is likely to be mentioned in a global plastics pollution treaty that’s currently being negotiated. But there’s conflict in the negotiations: some parties want continuing unfettered plastic production but better waste management. Others want systems to be transformed to reduce plastic production and limit it to plastic that’s essential, safe and sustainable.
In our southern sliver of the planet, can old memories of ubiquitous reused glass bottles persuade us that different ways are possible? Blumhardt thinks people care enough to act.
“People already go out of their way to find somewhere to recycle their bottle caps or soft plastics, so it’s not that people can’t be bothered. I think people hesitate to embrace reuse systems because reusable packaging isn’t really offered by big brands or available at supermarkets. So people have to switch to buying brands they don’t know and do something different.”
She thinks people would feel comfortable if it was more common and the returns process was as easy and convenient as recycling.
Piatek says there’s a big need for behaviour change, and Again Again will soon roll out a “Become a Borrower” marketing campaign.
But realistically, she says, “the driver of better systems won’t be the feel-good sustainability stuff but the scalable, ‘I’m reducing the costs to my business’ stuff”.
A top-down approach
Jacqui Forbes (Ngāruahine, Ngāti Tama) recycles avidly but she doesn’t think much of it. “Recycling in the waste hierarchy is right next to sending it to landfill,” she says. “Rethink, reduce and reuse are at the top of the waste hierarchy. Reuse is a beautiful kaupapa.”
Forbes leads Para Kore, a Māori zero-waste initiative that helps marae, schools and companies reduce waste. But it’s not just about measuring their rubbish and recycling.
“All that effort is at the bottom of the cliff,” says Forbes. “If we want to change the world, we have to start at the top of the cliff. So we teach people how to use less and we educate about the whole harmful system – the extraction, manufacture, distribution and disposal.”
She says recycling doesn’t reduce or eliminate the system, rather it supports it, although with some things, recycling is the best option. She points to research from Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka showing that knowing things can go in the recycling bins helps people feel justified about buying more.
Her concern is apt. Most recycling is downcycling, so it doesn’t reduce demand for the original item. Petrochemicals, which include plastics, are becoming the largest driver of oil demand. All plastic eventually degrades into microplastics. Its chemical additives, many of which have dubious or poorly understood safety profiles, can leach out. New Zealand research has found microplastics in air, shellfish, soil and wastewater in the Marlborough and Fiordland sounds and in beach sand.
“Nobody wants this extractive and exploitative system,” says Forbes. She describes Para Kore as a pushback to help remember where we are from, and that we are children of Ranginui and Papatūānuku.
“Our identity as Māori comes from the natural world. In te ao Māori, we’re all related – there’s an interconnectedness, and with nature, too.
“If people with lots of money want to be well, then people without lots of money need to be well, too, and we all need healthy soils, healthy air and healthy water. But there are so many examples of degradation of the natural world.”
Give it a nudge
Legislative nudges for reusables have begun in Europe, giving reusable-fleet providers a shot at financial viability. In Sweden, a new rule requires businesses above a certain size to offer a reusable option at no extra cost to customers buying takeaways. Germany has similar rules, and soon all food and beverages consumed on site must be served only in reusable packaging – as is already the case in France.
With such rules, suddenly many businesses need reusable packaging, and many don’t want to manage it themselves. This opens up opportunities for third-party businesses wanting to invest in providing the back-end service of collecting, cleaning and redistributing containers on behalf of multiple vendors.
A company called Tomra does just that in Aarhus, Denmark. Its standardised reusable cups are being used by multiple coffee shops across the city in a three-year pilot. After customers finish their takeaway drink, they drop the cup in one of many streetside reverse vending machines and reclaim their deposit using a card, phone or smartwatch. Tomra provides the cups and vending machines and collects, sanitises, inspects and redistributes the cups.
The Aarhus trial is being watched by Parul Sood, Auckland Council’s general manager of waste solutions.
“Could we have a similar thing here, starting with coffee cups and things like bubble tea? Reuse would move the dial way more than recycling. And making it easy for consumers is a big way to shift the mindset.”
She thinks that here it’s unlikely anything but national-level regulation could require businesses to do such a thing. “Auckland Council would probably need a bylaw. But if there was countrywide legislation, it would make it so much easier, rather than every council coming up with their own scheme and battling from their own corner. We’re a small country and we need economies of scale.”