Refillable pouches replace single-use plastics
Getting rid of single-use plastic from your kitchen, laundry and bathroom is easy with ZeroCo's refillable pouches.
Zero Co
Zero Co is an online e-commerce direct-to-consumer brand, selling personalcare and home-cleaning products with an order, return and refill system. .
How Bin Trim helped
A Bin Trim assessor visited the business to do a free waste assessment. The assessor estimated the volumes of material that would otherwise go to landfill and collaborated with ZeroCo to form an action plan.
ZeroCo had specific needs, and supported by their assessor they developed an innovative solution - a plastic pouch washing machine to enable the use of refillable pouches. The design and construction of the machine was supported by a Bin Trim rebate of $50,000.
Results
The new equipment enabled the refillable pouches to be resued. Thousands of pouches are cleaned each week. After they are washed and sterilized, , they are refilled and resold as a replacement pouch, and returned to customers multiple times. Approximately 20% of pouches returned wear out and they are then recycled for reuse in manufacturing delivery envelopes, saving the purchase of new envelopes.
The numbers
- Bin Trim rebate: $50,000
- new equipment: Pouch Recovery Machine
- approximately 73.49 tonnes of waste diverted from landfill annually, with expectations to grow as the company works towards higher return rates and continues to expand
The benefits
- less waste going to landfill
- lower waste disposal costs
- giving the company a significant savings each year
- repeated reuse of pouches, reducing the need for new plastic pouches to be produced
- old pouches are recycled into envelopes
- innovation to solve a specific waste issue
