Post date: November 21, 2023 | Adventure
Why Refilling Is The Future Of Recycling
In our last blog post, we described why recycling wasn’t as effective as it once was, specifically for plastic. As the production of plastic continues to cheapen, more and more plastic is ending up in landfills because the cost of producing new plastic is lower than the cost of recycling old plastic. In this blog, we want to give you a more effective solution: refilling.
Do you have a trash bin or other receptacle in your home dedicated to the “recyclable” waste you throw away? Plastic bottles, cardboard, and other things often
Here are some short and sweet reasons why refilling is ultimately the more eco-friendly solution to our waste problem:
- Refilling requires no resources.
- Refilling requires no landfills.
- Refilling is “infinite recycling.”
Let’s quickly dive into each of these points to discuss why refilling is best using some modern statistics about recycling that you may not have known! Ultimately the goal is to explain why refilling your products is a better, more eco-friendly, and more consumer-friendly practice than recycling is.
We at Volt have moved towards refillable mens grooming products for the benefit of everyone. Now, let’s explain why.
Refilling Requires No Resources
Recycling isn’t as clear-cut of a process as it looks. To turn a used material into new and re-usable material, there needs to be a refining and repurposing process.
Oftentimes, this process is not only labor-intensive, but can be expensive and requires many resources to do so. Ultimately, the culmination of the costs of those resources and labor make recycling a not-so-profitable venture, especially with relatively cheap material like plastic.
As we know, plastic is probably the worst material to produce. Not only is it damaging to the environment, but is not easily degradable, and not easily recyclable. It’s cheap to produce, which is why it is so popular, but this low cost of production is a double-edged sword.
The fact that plastic is so cheap to manufacture often means that there is no money in recycling it. The more a material costs to produce, the higher the rewards will be to recycle it into reusable material. But if something costs more to recycle than to produce, then nobody will want to spend the extra money to recycle it.
It requires machinery, often running on electricity, gas, and oil to recycle something. This means that recycling requires resources that otherwise would never be used if something was simply refilled.
Put simply, resources that are put into the process of recycling material can be conserved by refilling your containers.
This is why we make Volt products refillable.
Refilling Requires No Landfills
Here’s the hard truth about recycling plastic. No matter what you do, all plastic will eventually end up in a landfill.
Plastic is not “infinitely recyclable.” That is to say, there is a certain amount of times that plastic can be recycled before it becomes unusable and must be thrown away.
Above, I mentioned that plastic goes through a transformative process to become repurposed and reusable plastic. This process will inevitably degrade the plastic’s quality, meaning that most plastic will only be recycled 2-3 times before the quality is no longer acceptable for most applications.
There is good news, though. Not all materials behave the same way that plastic does. Aluminum and glass, for example, are infinitely recyclable. This means they can effectively be recycled indefinitely without degrading quality or usefulness.
Overall, this means that there is much less of a chance that aluminum and glass end up in a landfill when they are recycled, making them more eco-friendly materials overall.
This is why Volt products are 95% plastic-free and we use high-grade aluminum refillable bottles. So, even though they are refillable, if you do ever have to throw away the bottle, they are more recyclable and eco-friendly than plastic is.
Refilling Is “Infinite Recycling”
There is one simple and easy way to think of the refilling vs recycling debate. Refilling and repurposing is always better than recycling.
Refilling and repurposing waste yourself requires less resources than recycling ultimately produces. The numbers are in and it’s estimated that by simply using a refillable water bottle, you could save up to 156 plastic bottles from filling the oceans annually.
Now, imagine if you started using refillable bottles for your shampoos, body washes, beard washes, shaving gels, etc.
In fact, we ran the numbers here too. By picking up one of Volt’s aluminum refillable bottles (150ml) of clear shave, and a single clear shave eco-refill pack (900ml), you can refill that aluminum bottle of clear shave up to 6 times!
All of the Volt eco-refill packs are packaged in aluminum pouches. This means that a single Volt bottle and refill pack can save 7 plastic bottles from flooding the oceans, all for the cost of recycling a single aluminum pouch, which is infinitely recyclable.
Not to mention, that Volt eco-refill pack lowers the cost per ounce of the product, meaning you save money too.
With Volt, there’s less waste, and at a lower cost with our refillable “infinite recycling” approach.
If you’d like to grab some of your own aluminum refillable premium men’s grooming products, consider signing up for our free Amp-It-Up rewards program below and earn amps on your purchases.
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