There’s something ironic about buying brand-new plastic containers in order to sell refill products. So we don’t.
Every 5L container we use at Arborfill has already had a life before it reaches us. We collect, clean and reuse containers rather than ordering new ones from a packaging manufacturer.
Not some of them.
All of them
We haven’t bought a single new 5L container for this range.
Reuse before recycling
Recycling absolutely has its place, but keeping something in use for longer is usually even better.
We've always seen so muhc value in an empty 5L container. A perfectly good container doesn’t suddenly become useless once it’s empty. If it can be properly cleaned, checked and refilled, we’d rather keep it circulating than replace it with another newly manufactured container.
It’s one of those small decisions that doesn’t look particularly exciting from the outside, but multiplied across hundreds of refills, it starts to matter.
It also means they might not all look identical
This is probably the less polished bit.
Because our containers are reused, you might occasionally notice small differences between them. They may have slightly different handles, lids, moldings or signs that they’ve been used before.
And we’re completely comfortable with that. What matters is that the container is clean, functional and ready to be used again.
The idea is to keep them moving
Locally, we can collect empty 5L containers and put them back into circulation again.
Fill it.
Use it.
Return it.
Clean it.
Fill it again.
That simple loop is exactly what refill was supposed to be about.
As Arborfill grows nationally, the logistics of returning larger containers become a little more complicated, and we’re continuing to work on how we can make that side of the system better too.
But the principle remains the same:
Use what already exists wherever we can.
Not perfect. Just better.
We’re not trying to pretend that every part of running a product business is completely waste-free.
It isn’t.
But we can make deliberate choices about the things we control.
Choosing not to manufacture or buy thousands of unnecessary new 5L containers is one of them.
It’s practical, it reduces waste, and, quite frankly, it just makes sense.