06/05/2026
Recycling… when in doubt, throw it out ♻️🗑️
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It might feel like a weird motto to hear from your local refill shop… but we will tell you why we live by these words at Re-Up.
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Check out recent Forum episode, How Plastic Took Over the World – And How Big Oil is Betting on It with and they plugged Re-Up as a solution to plastic waste :)
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Although it might feel good to throw things into that blue recycling bin, it’s important to get it right. At the refill shop, we see this as an opportunity to take ownership of our waste: reuse what we can, and when we can’t, make sure it’s actually a viable, valuable recyclable, not just a landfill item with a deceptive chasing-arrow triangle on it.
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Otherwise, we may just be “wishcycling,” which clogs up the recycling system and makes the economics of recycling less viable. If we can’t be certain something is a high-value recyclable, we use the motto: “When in doubt, throw it out.
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To better understand what actually gets recycled, check out this informative 10 minute video about recyclers and our current recycling system.
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DID YOU KNOW THAT 🗑️
The average California home fills up 65 – 95 gallons of trash each week? On average, Californians individually throw away 6 pounds of trash every day, that’s 2,200 pounds each year (that’s about the weight of a small car). In the same way we ask you to reuse your containers every time you refill, we do the same with our suppliers, actively pushing and supporting them in improving their waste streams. This is what we refer to as “circular”, where vendors take back their containers, wash, and reuse them. And although not every single product in our store comes this way, we are proud to say that, by volume, the overwhelming majority of our liquid products do :)
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