What a circular model looks like

The Dirt Company are an Aussie business selling laundry detergent online, and have created an awesome mini-circular model to eliminate their packaging waste.

👉 You buy refill packs which they send to you by post – your 3rd refill comes with a reply-paid envelope.

👉 When your refill packs are empty, you post them back. They then wash the refill packs, and reuse them for future orders.

👉 Every refill packet stays inside the loop and gets reused over and over again, effectively creating a waste-free system.

There’s a tonne more detail on their Refill Return Program page

This is an awesome example of how a circular model looks. As they say on their website, it takes a little work on your part and a little work on their part. But if everyone does their bit, it all stays in the “circle”.

You can pick holes in it for sure – what if someone doesn’t send their refill pack back? How much water is used to clean the packets? Doesn’t posting little packets all around Australia create more footprint?

So it’s not a perfect model, but it’s bloody good. It demonstrates one way that a product company can take responsibility for the potential waste it produces.

These are some numbers at the time of writing:

• 40,218 refill packs reused
• 80 tonnes of plastic eliminated
• 528,870 laundry jugs not manufactured

That’s AWESOME.

Imagine soft drinks, fast food, shoes, clothing, and other brands all had programs to take full responsibility for their waste, rather than leaving it to us to dispose of it correctly!