Our recycling system is broken. Now, it’s time for consumers and businesses to adopt recycling’s stronger sister: reusing.

The Problem with Recycling

When we recycle empty take-out containers, scrap paper or laundry detergent bottles, we intend to reduce waste and add these materials back into our system. What many don’t realize is how little of our recycling actually makes it back into our system.  

An abysmal 9% of plastics get recycled. The remaining 91% ends up in our land, air and water to later be consumed as microplastics.

Why the Recycling System is Broken

There are a few theories why our recycling system is broken. 

1. “Wish-cycling” (Recycling non-recyclable or contaminated goods (e.g., a greasy pizza box) results in landfilling otherwise good bins and batches of recycling.) 

2. Chinese buyers of US recycled goods have been overwhelmed by volume and can’t buy all of our recyclable materials.  

3. The perception that recycling is less convenient. 

4. People still don’t know how to recycle properly.  

5. People still don’t know that they can recycle. 

All of these factors inhibit our sustainability and have thrown a major wrench in our ability to recycle.

How Do We Fix the Broken Recycling System?

While it may be noble to tackle all of these challenges, resulting in incremental improvements to our recycling system, it’s not much more than a band-aid fix. 

A problem of this magnitude can’t be wholly fixed by minor changes, but rather calls for social innovation. We, as a society, need to adopt better habits – habits that result in exponential waste reduction. 

We must choose to reuse.

How to Practice Reuse in Your Home

Reuse in most households starts by asking, “Can my take-out container, scrap paper or laundry detergent bottle get reused?” 

In some cases, the answer is yes. In others, the answer is more complicated.  

The take-out container can be used as a Tupperware replacement for your next meal. The scrap paper can be used as kindling for a fire, a bookmark, or to jot down notes from a Zoom call.  

But what about your laundry detergent bottle? How can that get reused? 

And perhaps most challengingly: is it easy to reuse?

Reduce, Reuse… Refill

One answer that’s popped up over the last decade is refilling. Rather than buying a new bottle of dish soap or shampoo every time you run out, you refill the existing bottle with new product. That way, you skip the need to recycle altogether, which takes out the possibility of it being thrown in the trash.

Refilling then…

The recent history of refilling and refilling businesses is particularly interesting. 

A few early businesses suggested shipping the container back and forth for refills, but unfortunately this results in unwanted shipping and transit waste. 

Even more recently, “refilleries” emerged, offering consumers the ability to bring their empty bottles to a store and refill it themselves. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, many of these stores had to suspend this service to avoid cross-contamination. (The good news is a lot of these stores are reopening, but the “BYO” trend seems slower to re-emerge and puts extra burden on the customer.)

And now…

Good Filling, a retailer of all-natural home and body essentials out of Boston, MA, is delivering the most recent innovation to the refilling model: managing the refill service for customers.  

By offering 24-hour and zero-waste delivery, Good Filling has brought refilling to the masses and made bottle reuse easy, thus subverting the broken recycling system and reducing waste. With trading posts across the Boston area, and in-building bottle exchanges at participating residential buildings, Good Filling is joining the mission to bring convenience to the zero-waste movement.  

With new businesses in existence, it’s time we adopt reuse and switch out wasteful store-bought products and bottles for more sustainable refill options. 

As Annie Leonard once said, “Recycling is what we do when we’re out of options to avoid, repair or reuse the product first. Firstly: Reduce. Don’t buy what we don’t need. Repair: Fix stuff that still has life in it. Reuse: Share. Then, only when you’ve exhausted those options, Recycle.”