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As the holiday season approaches, there’s no better time to embrace sustainability and make choices that benefit both you and the planet.

At Refill With LESS, we're delighted to announce huge discounts on our premium selection of refillable glass and stainless steel bottles, helping you gear up for an eco-conscious festive season. From now until the end of the year, you can shop our refillable containers at unbeatable prices.

Why Choose Refillable Bottles?

Making the switch to refillable bottles isn’t just a trend—it’s a lifestyle that contributes to a more sustainable future. Every time you refill, you’re reducing single-use plastic waste, cutting down on unnecessary packaging, and saving money in the long run. Whether you need stylish storage for personal care products or efficient dispensers for household items, our reusable bottles provide an eco-friendly solution that doesn’t compromise on elegance.

Explore Our Refillable Bottle Collection We have:

* Glass Bottles: Crafted from high-quality, durable glass, they are perfect for storing shampoos, conditioners, hand soaps, and lotions.

* Stainless Steel Bottles: These bottles are sturdy and long-lasting.

Perfect Gifts for the Holidays

Our refillable bottles make the perfect gift for someone looking to incorporate sustainable practices into their daily lives, with a touch of sophistication.

These are Limited-Time Discounts: Don’t Miss Out!

Happy holidays, and happy refilling!

It’s been waaay too long since I last posted, so here’s a quick update on our pilot in India that’s demonstrating an alternative to the plastic sachet…

India Plastic Pact recently did a review of reuse systems in India. It underlined the importance of reuse to prevent plastic waste and captured developments in the country so far.

It’s a good report and we were excited to learn that we’re one of just two companies providing refills in India selected for a case study, the other one being Refillable, which is doing some great work.

We understand that the report was submitted to the UN INC-4 conference in Ottawa as part of negotiations to implement a legally binding treaty to prevent plastic waste, which is pretty cool.

Our solution focuses on low-income communities and aims to provide an alternative to single dose plastic sachets, which are often the only way many people can afford products.

Unfortunately, sachets can’t be recycled. Many billions are used every year and they’re a major cause of ocean microplastic. Greenpeace estimates Unilever alone sells over 50 billion sachets, up 40% since 2010. If you want to read more about the sachet problem and the important role companies like Unilever play in selling them, have a look here The Guardian, Gaia, Bloomberg, Greenpeace....

On the project itself, we’re now working to expand our work so we prevent 1 million sachets a year and (with a bit of luck!) reach break-even too. More on this to come soon (promise!).

Meanwhile, here’s the India Plastic Pact case study…

This year Earth Day is focused on plastics, with the theme Planet vs. Plastics.

EARTHDAY.ORG is pushing its message of being “unwavering in our commitment to end plastics for the sake of human and planetary health, demanding a 60% reduction in the production of ALL plastics by 2040”.

If you fancy an intro to the issue, it provides a great Plastic Pollution Primer and Action Toolkit

For our part, we’re offering our best ever discount bundle as an Earth Day Pack to get you everything you need to be able to do your refills from home.

40% of plastic use is for plastic packaging, almost all of it single use. The main frameworks seeking to manage this waste come from WRAP and Ellen MacArthur Foundation that have commitments for users of plastic packaging to make 100% of the plastic compostable, reusable or recyclable by 2025. While the first two options (making packaging compostable or reusable) can be effective at reducing plastic waste, they are difficult to attain, so signatures to these commitments focus on making their packaging ‘recyclable’.

But making plastic packaging ‘recyclable’ is of barely any benefit (see earlier posts).

But dig into the footnotes of the commitments and you find a definitional issue that makes them a little farcical.

Here, a plastic is considered ‘recyclable’ if there is a 30% or more post-consumer recycling rate in multiple regions, collectively representing at least 400 million inhabitants^[1].

By picking high recycling countries, like much of the EU and South Korea etc., signatory companies can piece together an area of 400 million people that reach this bar. But 400 million people is just 5% of the world's population.

Across much the world, recycling is very limited and often entirely absent. Allowing plastics recycled at 30% by just 5% of the world's population means that plastics recycled at a global average rate of 1.5% could still qualify as ‘recyclable’.

That’s like getting a passing grade if you get 1.5% on a test.

We found this such a shocking finding that we contacted Ellen MacArthur foundation for confirmation. They confirmed our conclusion, stating:

- About Recyclability, your interpretation is correct. The two criteria serve to identify whether a plastic packaging is recyclable in practice (as opposed to in theory), which is demonstrated to be possible if it crosses the 30% threshold ; and at scale, if it is indeed recycled at, at least, 30% over a significant population. We appreciate this does not mean that the plastic packagings above the threshold get all recycled.

With this definition, we acknowledge that the efforts to recycle lie with different stakeholders at different levels of the value chain and that not everything is in the power of brands putting packaging on the market. However, the definition and target (100% recyclable by 2025) are ambitious enough to hold these same companies responsible and accountable for their part.

So there you have it.

Brands stamp ‘recyclable’ in bold on their packaging and consumers take comfort from it, but companies know it’s largely meaningless and will make little difference.

And all the while WRAP and Ellen MacArthur Foundation provide cover, checking progress against commitments that will not make a dent in plastic use or the amount of plastic that goes to landfill or leaks to the environment.

We need a better framework.

[1] https://emf.thirdlight.com/link/Reporting-Resources-2022/@/preview/2

Here at Refill with LESS, we're all about making it easy to do your refills at home. We think it it’s the most efficient and effective way to prevent plastic waste but also save you money.

It turns out, a bunch of big brand companies think much the same. In their 2023 Global Commitments reports, various companies underlined that refilling at home is the best way.

L’Oreal said:  “refill at home is the most powerful system in term of environmental impact”.

It’s clear too that large consumer goods companies are investing in making larger packs available so that people can refill from home. Here's a selection of what some of them said…

• Colgate: During the next year, it is our goal to focus more on reuse/refill… We plan to continue to offer new products that will allow consumers to refill their packaging at home and partner with organizations working with reuse/refill.
• Reckitt: We have taken learnings from our previous pilots and made plans to scale our latest generation of refill at home products where possible, across more brands and more countries, to increase impact.
• Unilever: To date, our most successful refill formats have been refill-at-home innovations, enabled by concentrated formulas. We have scaled dilute-at-home formats which use significantly less plastic; Cif Eco Refill initially launched in UK and has since expanded across Europe, and our 6x concentrated OMO liquid laundry detergent, has now been rolled out across South America and Australia. Dove Concentrated Body Wash brought dilute-at-home refill formats into Personal Care. It uses 50% less plastic than a standard bottle after two refills.

Hopefully it won't be too long until we can offer some of these brands in refill format.

Check out our sale on everything you need to get going with refills. It includes our Christmas Personal Care Bundle that includes stainless-steel, clear and amber glass bottles, stainless-steel push pumps and a range of personal care products to help you prevent plastic waste and smell wonderful. Perfect for that someone or family that has everything and wants to prevent plastic waste. And it's over 30% off too.

If you follow Bio-D, you may well see our stainless-steel bottles in its social media in coming weeks.

The idea of getting a stainless-steel laundry bottle for life is catching on. Use the bottle with Bio-D’s eco-friendly laundry detergent and it's a smart addition to any laundry room.

You save money on the product and prevent plastic waste. What's not to like?

Check out our stainless-steel laundry bottles here. And if you'd like to order one with Bio-D laundry detergent, we have a choice of Fragrance Free, or its most popular fragrance, Lavender.

Our new new stainless-steel laundry ‘Bottle for Life’ got some press coverage recently!

It was featured in a number of outlets, including the Yorkshire Times and Hull Is This.

All the pieces mention how refilling at home can help consumers prevent a substantial amount of plastic waste. A typical household purchases roughly one plastic laundry detergent bottles each month, creating 12 bottles of plastic waste each and every year. By using the stainless-steel ‘Bottle for Life’ and refilling from home, consumers can prevent this.

The bottle looks great too alognside our hollow stainless steel dosing cup, a UK first!

Learn more and perhaps buy a bottle here.

Our pilot has been going six months, the headline news is that our refill alternative to sachets is working.

We’ve been testing three ways to distribute bulk product and have faced teething problems with all three, but for the most part things have gone extraordinarily well. The solution works well in urban and rural villages and seems especially well suited to low-income household.

After receiving a small free sample, consumers pay the same unit price point as the market leading sachet (Clinic Plus), and bulk distributors purchase from us.

We recently conducted a consumer survey and once these results are processed, we'll come back with further insights. Watch this space!

Refill With LESS is the latest addition to LESS's portfolio. It's an e-commerce site that offers customers the chance to buy stylish non-plastic bottles (glass, stainless-steel) to use time and time again, avoiding the need to keep buying single-use plastic bottles. It also sells the liquid to refill the bottles, from several brands across a range of personal and household care categories. If you're looking to move away from plastic, take a look how we can help you do that, and save you money at the same time.

It's available nationally, with free shipping for orders over £50.

And to help you save even more money, during the month of May we're offering a 15% discount on your first order - just use the the code SAVE15 at checkout.

Come in and look around.