Mumbai: In today’s world, living with COVID-19 is the new normal. Everyone is finding ways to adapt to it. Companies are restructuring themselves; people are reluctant to step out of their houses even for essentials, factories and transport are non-operational and the economy is on an all-time low. Amongst many such consequences, not only have we overlooked but also have unintentionally participated in building up another “consequence”, which has the capability of becoming the next big pandemic: Plastic waste.
In our battle with COVID-19, a lot of plastic bottles of sanitizers, hand wash, floor cleaners, etc., were sacrificed and the brunt of this sacrifice had to be faced by Mother Earth. These bottles were never segregated and recycled but always ended up in the landfill or polluting the oceans.
In a bid to reduce this waste, Refillable stepped in. Refillable is a platform that offers refill packs (bottles) on all home care liquids through an e-truck, which has a mechanism to dispense liquids in the most hygienic method. It’s like a portable convenience store which has various products from different brands of home care liquids provided in the most eco-friendly way possible. Customers are encouraged to bring their own bottles thereby reducing further waste. As an alternative, they also provide aluminium bottles.
“During the pandemic, we saw that with the increase in the consumption of hygiene products such as sanitiser, handwash, the amount of single use plastic consumed increased by 47%. So rather than damage control, we felt we needed to create a solution that eliminates plastic waste at source keeping in mind cost, convenience and quality for the consumer. And with the lockdown people couldn't venture out so our Refill Truck goes to consumer's households and refills in their societies,” says Purav Desai, Co-Founder, Refillable & Cupable, when asked what was the driving force behind formation of Refillable & Cupable.
On World Environment Day, they have come up with #PaywithPlastic. “To create awareness against single use plastic we started off this campaign where people can give 10 bottles for 1 litre free home care liquid. This was done to provide doorstep collection of plastic waste as well as show them the Refillable solution which does not generate any waste. So it solves two issues in one shot. For World Environment Day, we are partnering with societies where they can message us on WhatsApp, Instagram as well as visit our website. Going forward we wish to make this a regular feature with the help of our partner brands,” Purav informs.
