What’s the biggest barrier to changing behaviours in your home? Well, if something is too complicated or too much hassle versus “what you’ve always done”, you are unlikely to make significant changes in your life or routine.
This applies closely to what we do at Bower and we’ve spent many years studying and analysing the refill market to help us design and refine the best possible solution.
The answer is always pretty simple - make it easy! Or make it as easy as possible relative to the usual alternative, i.e. just throw it away and it becomes somebody else’s problem.
So, to help you make reuse and refill as convenient and easy as possible, here are our top five tips for incorporating these practices seamlessly into your home.
1. Create your refill station
Creating a dedicated area in your home for refill is a good idea, usually the kitchen sink. Line up your refillable dispensers, remove the tops and leave the dip tubes hanging over the sink so any drip residue doesn’t end up on your work surfaces.
Make sure your dispensers are all properly labelled (we provide stickers for exactly this purpose) and refill one by one. Then store your empty pouches below the sink (if you have room) or if they are empty send them back to us in your pre-paid returns envelope. Our record is 10 empty pouches in one envelope!
Most of our customers tell us that they love that refill moment, it is very satisfying and - let’s face it - a whole load easier than carting all your empty containers in a tote bag to a refill store.
2. Save simple everyday reusable objects
The obvious example here is the humble jam jar. In our home, almost all of our water glasses are reused jam jars, they also double up as small vases for early season cut flowers, or storage for salad dressings and sauces in the fridge.
All you need to do is give them a wash and find a tupperware box to store all the lids in so you can use them as and when required.
Egg boxes are great for planting seedlings and even for DIY soundproofing material!
3. Sending back the packaging for reuse
This is all we ask you to do, we even provide a free post returns envelope to help you do it! We know that it’s more of an effort than just chucking stuff in the bin, or putting it into your recycling box - but remember that less than 9% of everything you put out on the pavement ever gets recycled.
Remember you don’t need to go to the post office, just pop the envelope into your nearest post box. Check out this awesome map that’s been built using open data to help you find your nearest post box.
A good reminder is to leave the full returns envelope in your ‘post pile’ by the front door (if you have one!) with whatever other letters or returns you need to post. Visual reminders always work the best!
4. Kiss goodbye to sorting plastic waste (that doesn’t get recycled)
It’s Monday night, it’s raining and cold, the kids are running riot in the kitchen and you’ve got to sort through all the plastic bottles and containers to put in your recycling for the following morning.
Not any more! With Bower’s reuse and refill system, we are helping eliminate huge volumes of single use packaging waste, so the volume of waste you need to sort will massively reduce, buying you more time to the washing up or put your feet up in front of the telly!
Also, we know that less than 9% of the plastic packaging you put out on the kerbside ever gets recycled so it’s a win win for your convenience and for the planet.
5. Make sure you can see how much product is left in the bottle!
With refillable products there is nothing worse than running out and having to make an “emergency purchase”, usually of an inferior product from a nearby shop (not mentioning any names, maybe rhymes with Dairy…).
So it’s critical that you can see the product level inside your dispenser! We are always amazed when we see other “refill” offers in aluminium or ceramic bottles with no visibility of product level - it’s a bad user experience and just plain inconvenient.
Bower dispensers are all see-through or at best slightly opaque so you can keep an eye on that liquid level. When you are down to the last couple of inches, be sure to update your subscription to ensure your next round of refill packs arrive on schedule. Simple!
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We hope you find these top tips helpful. Our mission is to help you eliminate plastic waste through joining the refill revolution. If you’ve got tips of your own, please DM us on Instagram or leave a comment below this blog - thanks!
— Team Bower 🌎💚