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Once considered detrimental to creating branding opportunities reusable packs are back, and with innovative ways to keep customers hooked, reports Catherine Dawes

Jesus turned water into wine. But now one Australian company is turning wine into water with its reusable packaging. Reschke wine bottles use a glass stopper and a removable paper label so that when the wine has been drunk, the bottle can be reused for water.

Second in the reduce, reuse, recycle trilogy, reusable packaging is a great idea that hasn’t really hit the mainstream. It predates recycling and the green agenda, with the traditional milkman and returnable beer bottles classic examples of packaging reuse. Logistics, consumer convenience and arguments around pack minimisation versus recyclability have, in the past, proved to be stumbling blocks. But consumers are increasingly aware of, and willing to act on, environmental issues. Is now the time to bring back reusable packaging?

When I was young, you used to return glass beer and lemonade bottles and you’d get a bit of money back, says Seymourpowell director of packaging Neil Hirst. This was still the case until recently in Holland, where beer was sold in returnable bottles. This meant that all the bottles had to be standardised. Big brands came in and introduced unique bottles that didn’t fit into the refill system. These brands then had a commercial advantage because they stood out on shelf and so the whole system broke down, says Hirst.

However, refillable packaging could be used to increase brand loyalty – locking consumers into buying refills – in the manner of razor blades once the initial razor handle has been bought. Gemma Brooks, structural packaging designer at Holmes & Marchant, suggests that this can be taken further, so that the packaging acts as a docking station. The design consultancy worked with Gillette on a gift pack that also acted as a bathroom tidy, with spaces to hold a razor, spare blades and shaving foam.

Another example is Ecover cleaning products, which enable customers to refill bottles from large vats in specialist stores.
Dairy Crest launched Jugit last year, designed by Vibrandt Form and made by RPC. The consumer buys a hardwearing plastic jug and refills it with bags of milk. By making the initial investment in the jug, the customer is committed to buying Dairy Crest bags of milk to refill it – until rival companies launch similar products.

The sturdy initial pack with pouch or bag refills has been trialled in other sectors, such as laundry detergents. Dairy Crest says its bag uses 75% less packaging than the standard HDPE bottle, but the flexible plastic refill is not always such an easy sell. It’s hard to know what’s best. Is it better to use a little bit of material that you can’t recycle or more material that you can? asks Hirst. He argues if consumers are unsure what’s best, they are less likely to adopt a new way of doing things. Recycling has been heavily promoted to the public, rates are rising and consumers seem to be sold on the idea. It may be difficult to convince people to abandon their new-found confidence in recycling in favour of life-cycle analyses on the carbon footprint of pouches.

Simple sells
There is also the convenience factor. If a refill is likely to spill or break, or a consumer has to go out of their way to refill the pack, most will give up. Dragon Rouge designer Teri Van Selm adds that a simple diagram should be enough to explain how to reuse a pack. If the idea is too complex, users will be more inclined to throw the pack away than reuse it.

Vibrandt Form is redesigning Jugit to make it easier to use. The best packs you don’t need to read; you should be able to just pick it up and use it. If it’s not really easy, it just pisses people off, says creative director Miles Hawley. The first
Jugit required around 12 steps to insert, clamp in place, pierce and pour the milk. Vibrandt Form has reduced that to three or four steps. The redesigned Jug It is due to be released later this year.

Hawley adds that for consumers to happily reuse a pack and keep it out on display it is key the branding is not too ‘in your face’. People keep things in empty Quality Street tins, but they keep them under the stairs or in the garage because they’re big and brash and purple, he says.

Webb Scarlett deVlam designed the packaging for Reschke’s reusable wine bottles. The paper labels on the bottles can be easily removed, leaving only the company logo subtly etched into the glass. Webb Scarlett deVlam came up with the idea of using a glass stopper with a rubber seal, which means the bottles can be refilled with water once the wine has been drunk.

The idea is that people will buy into the wine brand because they like the idea of the little bit of social responsibility, says partner Ian Webb. It extends the life of the packaging. It’s not going to single-handedly save the planet, but it is a motivation to buy and keep the brand around.

As campaigns for restaurants to offer tap water gather momentum, refillable wine bottles providing a chic method of serving water may become more widespread.

Wine is still a relatively luxury item and Webb believes it is easier to convince customers to reuse and display luxury items. People don’t mind cluttering up their lives with brands that say something about them – it’s an unconscious cachet thing.
Holmes & Marchant’s Brooks agrees that there is more potential for reuse in the luxury and gift sectors. Gifts are a value-added purchase and so people are prepared to pay a little more. I have seen the emergence of the product-like pack. She explains that if the packaging is designed to be kept then more time and resources can be dedicated to it. The packaging still represents the brand when it is being reused and so the last thing any brand wants is for its representative to look tatty or fall apart quickly. For high-end whiskys the cases might use leather with metal clasps. At which point the craftsmanship is more like a handbag than packaging, she suggests. People keep beautiful perfume bottles almost as objets d’art, agrees Hawley.

Brooks cautions that packs using more material and resources that aren’t reused are counter-productive from an environmental perspective. To encourage customers to keep and reuse their empty packaging, either by taking it back to a store to be refilled or through a refill pouch system requires changes in customer behaviour. It requires retailers to give up shelf space to two different forms of the same pack – the primary and the refill – or to vats from which consumers help themselves. It also requires major brands to push the concept to make it widespread enough to be easy for consumers. The problem is everyone is looking after their own interests. There are only a few companies that have the scope to set up returnable packaging on their own. It’s down to them to take the lead, insists Hirst.

TERRACYCLE
Why pay for brand new packaging when a bigger, richer company has already done it and it’s going to be thrown away? This is the concept behind US-based Terracycle, says spokesperson Albe Zakes.

The company’s first product was a plant food. Terracycle gets schools, community groups and recycling facilities to send it empty 500ml PET drinks bottles. It pays five cents per bottle. These are cleaned, filled, relabelled and sold in major retailers such as Wal-Mart.

The company has bought secondhand versions of the filling machines used by major soft drinks companies. Zakes explains: There are differences in the shapes of the bottles, which means our labels can look a bit funky and stretched. But bottles are a fairly standard height and mouth gauge, which means our filling lines work across them.

Zakes says only 5-10% of the bottles sent in are too dirty or damaged to use. Because it is organisations like schools and churches they are very involved in the project and so most of the stuff is in very good condition.

Terracycle has reused 3.2 million bottles since it launched in 2001 – most of these since 2004 when the company expanded.

Two years ago, the firm turned its attention to non-recyclable packaging. Terracycle collects a host of packaging including drinks pouches, crisp and biscuit wrappers, corks and cereal bags. The pouches are sorted into brands, cleaned, sewn together and turned into lunch boxes, pencil cases and backpacks. Terracycle has the backing of major brands in these categories, which enables it to use the branding on the products and pays for the used packs. For example, Capri Sun pays the two cents per pouch.

Energy bar wrappers are put through a heat laminator, which fuses them into sheets that can be sewn into kites and tote bags. Terracycle’s newest product is a shower curtain made from Bear Naked-branded cereal bags.

We try to make the finished product target the same consumer as the original. Capri Sun is drunk by children so that’s who those products are aimed at. It’s great marketing for the brands involved, says Zakes.

Terracycle is the first company to be able to take its products nationwide, through getting brands to buy into the scheme.
It is currently US-based, but is looking to expand into the UK late this year or early next.