NZ First: Ecostore Refills Now Available at the supermarket

Ecostore, New Zealand’s leading brand in sustainability, is expanding its refill offering to consumers, in a New Zealand first, by bringing refill stations to supermarkets. This first ecostore refill station at a New Zealand supermarket will be available from today, at New World Durham Street, Christchurch, with more to come at other supermarket locations in 2019.

Ecostore’s new refill bottles are a combination of recycled plastic and sugar plastic. The recycled plastic is 10% post-consumer recycled (PCR) made from New Zealand milk bottles. The sugar plastic material used in their packaging is sourced from sugar cane and not from petroleum.

The company already has over 60 refill stations up and down the country at wholesale refilleries, such as Good For, Huckleberry, Bin Inn, and other environment centres, as well as offering refills at their flagship store in Freemans Bay for more than 10 years, however this is the first refill station of its kind in a New Zealand supermarket.

Ecostore’s CEO, Pablo Kraus, says ecostore is leading the way in minimising packaging waste via bulk formats and refill solutions.

“We are thrilled to bring the first refill station for cleaning and personal care liquid to New Zealand supermarket customers and make the refill experience even better for our customers. We believe these refill stations will encourage more people to refill rather than buy a new single use bottle.”

Ecostore will be providing supermarket customers with free starter 500 ml or one litre bottles at the new refill station at New World Durham Street Christchurch, which they can use again and again. The refill bottles are recyclable (Number 2 HDPE), however the bottles have been developed specifically to reuse and refill as many times as possible. The bottles are made at ecostore's manufacturing site, which has been zero net carbon since 2011.

Consumers simply get their free starter ecostore refill bottle at the supermarket refill station, or when reusing this ecostore refill bottle, simply select the product they would like to refill and tap or pump the product into their bottle and fill to the top. They apply a label on the bottle, write the product code and name, and proceed to the checkout to pay, in the same way people currently buy nuts from the bulk bins at the supermarket.

They select the product they would like to refill, then tap or pump the product into their bottle and fill to the top. They apply a label on the bottle, write the product code and name, and proceed to the checkout to pay, in the same way people currently buy nuts from the bulk bins at the supermarket.

At New World Durham Street Christchurch supermarket, the ecostore product available to refill includes Laundry Liquid and Dishwash Liquid, Shampoo and Conditioner, Body and Hand Wash.

Kraus says consumers are ready for this change after the single use plastic bag ban last year.

“People are used to bringing in their reusable supermarket bags; now they can also bring in their reusable ecostore refill bottles to conveniently refill their cleaning and personal care liquid at the supermarket.

“We are also focused on packaging that is 100% circular, keeping materials in use and out of nature, so we are in the process of evaluating a bottle collection system for our refill stations so we can reuse these bottles as post-consumer-recycled plastic.”

Ecostore and Foodstuffs are both a signatory to the Plastics Packaging Declaration, which companies promise to make their packaging reusable and recyclable by 2025.

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