Food retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has announced the expansion of its refill scheme, bringing the ‘Refilled’ reusable packaging initiative to a total of 25 stores.
The move follows a successful trial of the concept in six shops in 2023, and it is part of the business’s ‘Plan A’ social and environmental strategy which includes the target of removing one billion units of plastic packaging by 2027. M&S said last month that it had met its goal to remove 75 million units in the 2023-24 financial year.
The refill scheme is run in association with Reposit, and allows customers to choose from ten pre-filled, own-brand homecare products, including cleaning sprays, laundry detergents, fabric conditioners and washing up liquids. The initial purchase includes a £2 cost for the returnable bottle, which can be returned to store after use at which point the customer receives the deposit back in a voucher form to be redeemed against a second purchase in the M&S Refilled range.
Earlier this week we published a comment piece from grocery training and research group IGD, offering best practice advice to retailers on what is required to successfully launch and operate a refill scheme.
M&S has reported that more than 10,000 of its customers have engaged with the Refilled scheme to date – with the most popular product being the Citrus Washing Up Liquid.
Lucinda Langton, head of sustainability at M&S Food, commented: “At M&S, we want to support our customers live more sustainably.
“Our Refilled scheme has proven hugely popular – showing there is high demand for refillable and great value options – so we’re delighted to be able to introduce this into even more of our stores across the UK this month.”
Stuart Chidley, co-founder at Reposit, said his company and M&S had built “a scalable standardised returnable packaging solution that works for business and customers”.
“This scale up is the result of strong customer engagement which we hope will result in more action across the retail industry to offer customers a convenient alternative to single-use packaging,” he added.
M&S, in partnership with Reposit, cleaning product manufacturer Ecover and not-for-profit organisation City to Sea, is part of a project to demonstrate returnable packaging systems at scale. The project is supported by UK Research & Innovation’s Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Fund.
The M&S stores which have – or will shortly have – a Refilled station are, as follows:
- Aintree
- Bluewater
- Camberley
- Cheshunt
- Falkirk Central
- Hackney
- Hedge End
- Hempstead Valley
- Kingsley Village
- Leamington
- Liverpool One
- London Colney
- London Stratford
- Meadowhall
- Mosely
- Oatlands Harrogate
- Purley Way
- Silverburn Glasgow
- Silverlink Newcastle
- Stevenage
- Stockport
- Tolworth
- Vangarde
- Wolstanton Stoke
- York
Refilled is a separate initiative to the food-based ‘Fill Your Own’ scheme first launched in 2020 which Green Retail World covered at the time and which is still available in M&S’s Aintree, Banbridge, Bluewater, Edinburgh Gyle, Hackney, Hedge End, Lisburn, Manchester, Meadowhall, Solihull Sears, Silverlink, Staines Two Rivers, Westfield Stratford, York Vangarde, and Wolstanton Stoke stores.
Several of the large UK retailers have trialled resuable packaging schemes, including Tesco, which ran and then withdrew its Loop scheme in 2022 citing the need for a cultural and consumer behavioural shift for reuse to truly take off.
[Image credit: M&S]
