3 Reasons You Should Try Our Online Refills
Do you remember visiting the homeland and being sent to the corner store to return empty soda bottles? Yeah, so do we. Refilling has been a practice in Latin America for decades, especially for soda and beer. Consider this: throughout most of the 1990s, refillable glass bottles held between 79 and 84 percent of the total sales volume in the Mexican beer market. Refilling is also common in other Latin American countries, like Argentina and Brazil.
This is another great example of how our ancestors led the way on sustainability, though they are rarely celebrated as innovators. We’re here to celebrate and bring back this sustainable tradition with a modern twist and convenience. With VOLVERde’s online refills, you can enjoy frequently used personal care and cleaning products without contributing to more plastic in landfills.
Here are 3 reasons why VOLVERde’s online refills are the way to go:
1) Curb your plastic footprint
Did you know that only 9% of recycled plastic actually gets recycled? We know we can’t recycle our way out of the plastic crisis. So we designed our refill program to be closed-loop, meaning it creates no net new waste. How you ask? When you’re done with your pouch, you mail it back to us in a prepaid envelope (yep, we’ve covered it), and we sanitize it and use it for the next customer.
You may be wondering: how are plastic pouches better than single-use plastic products? While we would love to find a plastic-free container that is easy to ship and clean for our refills. We unfortunately haven’t found a plastic-free solution that works.
However, we use BPA-free refill pouches that use 93% less plastic than conventional bottles. Our refill pouches also use significantly fewer resources to produce and transport, reducing their overall carbon footprint compared to rigid plastic bottles. Lastly, ours are designed to be reused over and over again rather than discarded after one use.
2) Easy and convenient
We made our online refills easier than ever and definitely more convenient than our childhood memories of lugging a six-pack of empty glass bottles to the corner store. Here’s how it works:
- Pick. Pick your favorite product from our refill catalog.
- Refill. When you get your refill, pour it into a clean, dry container. (Check out our post on cleaning tips).
- Return. Mail the pouch back to us in the prepaid envelope. We then sanitize and reuse them for the next customer.
Our online refills are conveniently mailed to you with our plastic-free shipping, saving you time and hassle.
3) Our refills meet you wherever you are on your zero-waste journey
One of the things we embrace at VOLVERde is the diversity of needs and preferences of our customers. Not all susty folks are down with shampoo bars or lotion bars. We knew we needed a low-waste option for commonly used personal care items beyond the fabulous bar options we offer.
We also don’t believe in forcing products on our customers just because they are plastic-free – we think true sustainability is meeting you where you are and giving you options. This is why our refill catalog includes shampoo, conditioner, body wash, lotion, hand soap and dish soap refills. Wherever you are, whatever you like (or don't like), there's a refill option for you.
Interested but not ready to commit? All of our refills come in 2oz sample sizes, packaged in aluminum bottles which are easily recycled. But you should know that we worked really hard to test every. single. product on our platform. We did the hard work of testing so you don’t have to.
Check out our entire Refill Catalog or Refill FAQs for more information. Happy refilling!
Abrazos,
A+ M
