World Refill Day is a global public awareness campaign to prevent plastic pollution and help people live with less waste.
City to Sea has run the campaign for the last few years in the UK as National Refill Day and after taking a break last year due to the situation with Covid, they are back and going global. City to Sea is behind the global Refill campaign, helping people to eat, drink and shop with less plastic.
This year World Refill Day is focusing on getting reuse back on the agenda post pandemic, celebrating the innovation happening around the world when it comes to reuse, and mobilising a global community to show businesses, brands and governments that we still want see action on plastic and reuse is the solution.
Jo Morley, City to Sea’s Head of Campaigns and project lead for Refill, tells us more about the campaign:
WHY REFILL? WHY NOW?
Our addiction to single-use plastic is out of control and the pandemic has only made it worse. We’ve seen governments and businesses backtrack on their commitments to take action and some have banned reusables all together, whilst increasing the use of single-use plastic.
As a global movement, we have the power to create a wave of change and show businesses, brands and governments that we want to see action on plastic, and reuse is the solution. We need to drastically reduce single-use plastic and set meaningful targets for refill and reuse.
And as individuals, our small changes really do add up. By choosing to reuse, we’re saving millions of pieces of plastic and sending a message to the rest of the world that the solutions to plastic pollution and the climate crisis are there – and together we can keep our environment, oceans, cities and communities plastic free for the future.
RETURNING TO REFILL
As a result of the pandemic, we’ve seen a huge increase in single-use plastic – particularly from take-away food packaging, retail and PPE - and organisations have backtracked on their commitments to tackle single-use and scale reuse.
Many retailers, chains and brands banned reusables, despite the evidence from over 120 scientists publicly stating they are safe to use.
A key theme of World Refill Day is to help businesses to return to reuse as they reopen and get reusables back on the menu.
World Refill Day is an opportunity to share guidance with businesses and support them with safely accepting reusables again. Let's mobilise consumers to let businesses know consumer demand is still there and we want to be able to choose to reuse. It’s time to get reusables back on the agenda!
ACTIONS YOU CAN TAKE