Ecostore has been New Zealand’s leading brand in sustainability for 30 years, crafting high-quality and sustainable home, body, and baby care products.
“Since our inception, we have been dedicated to creating more sustainable ways of doing business,” said Kim Tickelpenny, ecostore’s general manager of sales for New Zealand and Australia.
In 2021, ecostore became a B Corp-certified business, a globally recognised certification as the highest standard for social corporate responsibility.
It has continued to proudly develop, manufacture, and pack its household cleaners, laundry, body care, baby care and oral care products at its own Toitū net carbon zero certified factory in Auckland.
Ecostore launched its first in-house refill option in 1997, with a mainstream rollout of refill stations beginning in 2017. Refills support people’s desire to do better, helping them to make small steps for the environment and provide more value with less plastic. Ecostore wanted to create accessible solutions that cater to different consumer needs, no matter where they are on their sustainability journey.
“We’re really proud of our refill offering. It’s one of the biggest things people can do to help save resources.”
Ecostore’s plastic bottles can be reused time and time again. Seventy-three percent of ecostore packaging is reusable. Using bottles and pumps repeatedly not only reduces plastic use but can also ease the pressure on the recycling stream at the end of a bottle’s life.
Tickelpenny said that customers have the option of refilling at one of over 100 refill stations in stores around the country. This allows customers to bring in their empty bottles and fill them back up with the same product but without the need for a new bottle.
Ecostore also offers bulk sizes for refilling at home. These 5L containers allow customers who don’t have easy access to a refill station to still participate in reducing plastic waste.
“Through our refill and bulk offerings, we’ve saved 99,187 kg of plastic or 1,885,657 bottles in 3 years.”
Tickelpenny continued that ecostore has worked hard to make refilling accessible to all, so where refill stations aren’t convenient, and there isn’t enough space at home for the bulk option, it also offers refill concentrates which are small and easy to grab with supermarket shopping.
Ninety percent of ecostore packaging is readily recyclable. When bottles have reached the end of life, they can be recycled at most council kerbside collections. However, they can also be returned through ecostore’s plastic return programme. Ecostore has over 50 bottle drop locations across Aotearoa.
By the end of last year, ecostore had collected 12,845kg of recyclable materials, the equivalent of over 180,000 one-litre dish liquid bottles.
With continuous improvement in mind, over the last three years, ecostore reduced the waste it sends to landfills by roughly 50 percent per tonne of the product it makes and has tripled the amount of recycled material used in its plastic packaging. By the end of 2022, 42 percent of ecostore packaging contained post-consumer regrind plastic.
In 2020, ecostore launched hair care bars and, as a result, has saved 322,600 plastic shampoo bottles from being made.
Since launching Cleaner Concentrates in 2021, ecostore customers have saved more than 6,200kg of plastic in 2021 and 6,700kg in 2022, the equivalent of over 185,500 500ml spray bottles.
This year, ecostore customers have even more options to reduce their reliance on plastic, with two new products now available, Toothpaste Tablets and Dish Soap Bars, both containing no plastic packaging.
Globally, plastic consumption has quadrupled over the past 30 years. Only nine percent of plastic waste is recycled. The bulk of plastic waste ends up in landfills, incinerated or leaking into the environment.
If current plastic production and waste management trends continue, there will be roughly 12 billion tons of plastic waste in landfills or the natural environment by 2050.
“We need to make refilling as convenient as possible, and it needs to become the norm.”
Ecostore refill stations have continued to roll out across New Zealand, Australia and Asia. It has over 200 refill stations globally.
“One day, we might get to the point where supermarket aisles are lined with refill stations, and customers can bring in their own bottles and refill them. It could be as normal as it is now to bring in your own supermarket bags.”
Ecostore believes there is an appetite for this kind of change. Four of the top ten concerns in New Zealand relate to plastic and the environment, and the personal commitment to live sustainably continues to increase every year.
“Our sustainability journey is driven by a core belief that there are better ways to do things, and we owe it to ourselves and the world to champion those efforts.”
Ecostore is dedicated to using business as a force for good, balancing profits and purpose.
Read more from the Novemebr issue of Supermarket News below:
