Our life cycle assessment (LCA) for the Refill Coalition has shown reusable packaging systems in the grocery sector can have significantly improved environmental performance compared to single-use alternatives.
The scope of the report covers two systems, trialled by ALDI (in-store) and Ocado Retail (online), comparing them with single-use equivalents across eight grocery products.
The environmental impact of single-use packaging lies in the front-loaded extraction and production of raw materials—for most single-use packaging, more than half of climate change impacts are due to packaging production alone. By contrast, reusable systems shift impacts toward energy use for washing and transport—a trade-off that will get cleaner over time with electrification and renewable power.
With real operational data, a cradle-to-grave boundary, and sensitivity-tested assumptions, our study showed:
- When deployed at scale, reusable systems beat single-use formats on environmental impact across nearly every metric for the seven out of eight products tested.
- Online reuse models are not just viable, they are high-performing.
- The breakeven point for climate impact is achievable in practical, commercial timeframes – typically between 10–25 uses would breakeven against even the most challenging formats and in some cases this is as low as 2-3 reuses.
- The online system trialled by Ocado Retail performed particularly well, delivering a reduction in climate change impact of up to 89% for laundry detergent.
Photo by Lucy J Toms Photography
