refilling station

You pour out the last bit of laundry detergent and throw out the big jug - hopefully in the recycling bin if your town recycles. Unlike aluminum cans or cartons of milk, these things are uncrushable and take up a lot of space and use a lot of plastic. It leaves your house and leaves your thoughts. Out of sight, out of mind.  Best case scenario, it will be sorted and smashed with a bunch of other plastic  and will end up in a recycling facility where it will be turned into microplastics that will go back into the production of another plastic jug. That would be an example of a circular economy where the item stays in the production “food” chain. Worst case scenario, it ends up in a waste field in Indonesia where there are miles and miles of garbage. Young kids spend hours picking through it for salvageable or salable material. Indonesia is halfway around the world from the United States, but do we really like the idea that someone else in the world has to deal with our garbage? The world is more and more interconnected, and it’s time to think of ourselves as global citizens. While one person’s trash may be another person’s treasure, let’s still “pick up after ourselves.”

Here’s a way to go a little more low waste and think outside the bin. Look for a store near you where you can refill your laundry jug instead of throwing it away. In our case, there is a low waste store called Center Goods in Lexington, MA, where you can do just that. And because the detergent is concentrated it will last for loads and loads of laundry. You can find “refilling stations” at Boston General Store in Dedham and Brookline and at UVIDA in Brookline, MA.

Lastly, stay tuned for another post about a new company putting refilling stations in apartment buildings and contributing to zero waste living!

At Center Goods in the center of Lexington, MA, you can not only refill your detergent, but you can also find all sorts of low waste, sustainable products. Check it out!