How a Refillery Reduces Plastic Waste — The Numbers Behind It

The Plastic Problem in Your Cleaning Cupboard

The average Canadian household goes through dozens of plastic cleaning and personal care bottles every year. Laundry detergent jugs, hand soap pumps, dish soap bottles, most end up in landfill, even when they're placed in the recycling bin. Plastic contaminated with soap residue is notoriously difficult to recycle, and most facilities simply don't process it.

A refillery model addresses this at the source. Instead of buying a new plastic bottle every time you run out, you keep using the same container or in our case, we handle the whole loop for you.

How the Jar Exchange Works

At No Planet B Refillery, most of our local customers experience what we call a jar exchange rather than a traditional refill. Here's how it works:

1. You order your products online for local delivery or pickup in the St. Albert area
2. We deliver your products in clean, sanitized glass jars
3. When you're ready for a refill, we collect your empty jars, bring fresh ones, and take the empties back
4. We clean, sanitize, and reuse every jar — the glass stays in circulation indefinitely
5. You keep your pump or sprayer and reattach it to each new jar

The result: zero new plastic enters your home with each order.

True Refills at the Farmer's Market

At our local farmer's market pop-ups, we offer true refills — bring your own container and we'll fill it on the spot. No packaging at all. This is the most zero-waste option we offer, and it's a great way to try a new scent before committing to a full jar.

What About Shipping?

For customers outside the St. Albert area, we ship across Canada. We pack every order in recycled packaging materials — so even your shipping box is part of the loop. Combined with glass bottles instead of plastic, you're eliminating the ongoing cycle of single-use packaging with every order, no matter where you live.

The Numbers That Matter

Consider a household that buys hand soap, dish soap, and laundry detergent on a regular basis. That's conservatively 12–20 plastic bottles per year for those three products alone. Over five years, that's up to 100 bottles — most of which end up in landfill.

Switch to a jar exchange model and that number drops to zero new plastic bottles for local customers. The glass jars we use are reused dozens of times before they're retired.

Why Glass?

Glass is infinitely recyclable without loss of quality. It doesn't leach chemicals into your products. It looks better on your counter. And in a jar exchange model, it never needs to be recycled at all — it just keeps getting reused.

Ready to Make the Switch?

If you're in the St. Albert area, hand soap, dish soap, and laundry detergent are all available for local delivery and pickup via jar exchange. Not local? We ship across Canada in recycled packaging. Either way, you're cutting plastic out of your cleaning routine for good.