Cooper's Refillery
Our Impact
We wanted to be confident that our refill stations will have a positive environmental impact. Thus, we conducted a sustainability analysis to compare the potential environmental impacts of single-use plastic bottles with plastic bottles that are refilled at one of our refill stations. Since transparency is important to us, we created this page to show you how we estimated our impact.
Our Impact (Detergent)
We based our calculations on a scenario where customers will refill their plastic bottle on average of 5 times before that bottle is returned to the waste stream (i.e., recycled, incinerated, or landfilled). We used carbon footprint (kg of CO2 equiv.) as a proxy for estimating environmental impact.
We expect 45% of customers will use our refill stations. In this scenario, these customers only use one bottle for every six times they buy new liquid detergent. This means that these customers on average use 83% less bottles. Thus, our refill stations can reduce the overall impact by 29%.
Only 10% of customers need to use our refill stations in order to have a positive environmental impact compared to the single-use scenario.
Plastic Savings per Machine (Detergent)
Each refill station will save
207kg
over its lifespan (5 years)
OR
the weight of one cute baby seal
Our Impact (Hand Soap)
We based our calculations on a scenario where customers will refill their plastic bottle on average of 5 times before that bottle is returned to the waste stream (i.e., recycled, incinerated, or landfilled). We used carbon footprint (kg of CO2 equiv.) as a proxy for estimating environmental impact.
Our refill stations for hand soap can reduce the overall impact by 33%. The single-use hand soap bottles have a higher impact compared to the detergent bottles, because they use more plastic per volume of hand soap and the hand soap bottle pump cannot be recycled. Furthermore, we expect people to buy a larger amount of hand soap.
If only 15% of customers use our refill stations for hand soap we will have a positive environmental impact compared to the single-use scenario.
Plastic Savings per Machine (Hand Soap)
Each refill station will save
628kg
over its lifespan (5 years)
OR
the weight of one adult polar bear
Assumptions
1. All calculations shown are based on one refill station.
2. Bottles are refilled an average of 5 times before being returned to the waste stream.
3. 40L of detergent will be sold per week per store.
4. 60L of hand soap will be sold per week per store.
5. The refill station has a lifespan of 5 years.
