31/01/2022
Mrs Kelvey and I recently visited our local refill store for the first time. We’ve known about it for a while but had never had the time to make the trip, but last Saturday we filled our bags with empty bottles and jars to see what it was all about.
A study by Deloitte (here) recently found that 1 in 3 British consumers claimed to have stopped purchasing certain brands or products due to ethical or sustainability related concerns. In particular, the study found that “limiting my use of single use plastic” is the most common step taken by consumers to live a more sustainable lifestyle, beating for example “buying local produce” and “reducing air travel”. Indeed, it has become a trope of environmental consumer TV shows to include vox pops of shoppers standing outside their local supermarket bemoaning the prevalence of plastic packaging – “but bananas come in their own wrapper!”.
While we have reported (here) and (here) about the extensive efforts being taken to reduce the amount of plastic packaging and to make it more recyclable, what if we could shop in a way which could eliminate single use plastic altogether? Enter the refill store, a shop where you fill your own empty containers with produce and pay by weight.
Brimming with Innovation
The Guardian reported (here) that there are approximately 200 refill, or zero-waste, stores in the UK. Many of them are small and independently run. This was the case for our local store, which was tucked in a small unit at the back of a garden centre. The process was simple enough, if a little time consuming. Weighing containers, filling containers, weighing containers again, all without losing track of your bottles, and trying to avoid spilling anything. This was slow; if the store had been busy (it wasn’t), there would have been a lot of waiting around.
The refill trend may have been spearheaded by small independents, but the world’s biggest supermarkets are now hot on their heels. These multinationals are hoping to further improve the experience for eco-conscious shoppers.
Walmart, the world’s largest company by revenue, has a number of interesting patents in this field. For example, US 10,438,186 Β2 describes an in-store weigh station which includes a camera which is able to not only identify the type of product being weighed, but also to identify the product’s ‘status’. For example, the system will apparently be able to detect whether your fresh produce is under-ripe or over-ripe. In addition, US 2021/0334781 A1 describes a weighing system in which information about the weighed product is transferred directly to a user’s smartphone to allow payment without the need to pass through a conventional checkout.
Multinational consumer product giant Unilever recently announced (here) a partnership with UK supermarket ASDA in Europe’s largest refill trial. Unilever, for its part, has also been innovating in this space. For example, US 2003/0051767 A1 describes a system comprising a refill station and a corresponding container. The container includes a memory chip with information about the container’s volume, how many times the container has been used, and what product is intended to go in the container. This information is readable by the refill station so that the container may only be filled with an appropriate amount of the correct product.
Products to Commodities
Once home, we unpacked our eco-friendly products and a thought struck me, I had no idea what brands, if any, were associated with the products. Consumer goods companies spend huge sums of money on branding, packaging, and advertising to make their products stand out on the shelf. In addition, the packaging and branding is carefully designed to form a link between the high quality product and the brand in the mind of the consumers. This is something which my colleagues in the trademark team (here) deal with daily and they would be happy to help you protect your brand.
Walking around our local refill store, the various dried goods, oils, and cleaning products were all in identical dispensers with little visible branding. This is clearly why Unilever wants to be on the front foot. By administering the dispensing stations themselves, they are able to put their famous brands front and centre.
But even so, when the products are home, they sit there in generic containers. It is possible that your premium brand products may be refilled into an old container originally containing a cheaper product. Worse still, for the likes of Unilever, you may choose to refill a premium brand bottle with a cheaper product; might you start associating the premium brand with an inferior product? The link between a brand, its packaging, and its quality will be eroded; things we now think of as products will be reduced to mere commodities. This is a nightmare for big brands, and one wonders how much they will resist allowing their products to be sold in this way.
Reduce or Recycle?
My college Joanne reported (here) about a number of sustainable innovations in packaging, such as bottles formed from algae, and packaging made from fungi. These technologies may be attractive to companies keen to highlight their green credentials, while maintaining their brand identity. Looking further ahead, one can imagine smart packaging which could detect the product therein and display the appropriate branding, or will the branding only appear as an augmented reality feature in Zuckerberg’s metaverse? Who knows?
More broadly, one wonders how keen consumers will actually be to shift to this new style of shopping. We refilled half a dozen containers and it must have taken 45 minutes. Although this was our first attempt, the idea of doing an entire weekly shop in this manner seems impractical if you plan to do anything else that day. Then there is the cost. We hoped, rather naïvely, that the lack of packaging may translate into a saving; we were wrong. Each product was far more expensive than we are used to paying. I was particularly shocked when a modest sized bottle of shampoo came in at £6! Even Mrs Kelvey is not accustomed to spending this much on her hair.
In addition, the rise of internet grocery shopping could stifle the popularity of refill stores. During the height of the pandemic, about 12% of all food sales was online, up from about 6% in 2019 (here). Over 40% of UK shoppers who took up online shopping during lockdown (including me and Mrs Kelvey), believe they will continue this habit once the pandemic is over. It is hard to see how a refill store could efficiently offer home delivery.
I did enjoy the visit to our local refill store. It was a novelty and I felt virtuous doing it. But at this stage, the concept’s shortcomings will probably put off many consumers. So while they may not represent the solution to curbing our insatiable appetite for single use plastic, refill stores may be part of the solution, along with improved packaging and more efficient recycling. After all, every little helps.
This article is for general information only. Its content is not a statement of the law on any subject and does not constitute advice. Please contact Reddie & Grose LLP for advice before taking any action in reliance on it.
