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  RETURN, REFRESH & REUSE

OUR PLANET haS taken care of us for so long. It's now time to return the favour.



Policy makers & enterprise have had their chance to  do the right thing. Is it right that our children are facing the catastrophic hangovers from events they're not responsible for? When did it become okay to fill our oceans with plastics, obliterate our rain forrests, and bury our waste? As a planet we're fighting to find solutions fast.  As a group, we decided it's time to make change today.

We're not the solution, but just a part of the groundswell. Talk is cheap. It's time to bring consumers, business leaders & brand designers together - laterally - to collaborate, and design a better way.  It's time to solve this, from the ground up., by engaging those responsible.

Return-Refresh-Reuse (rrr) is a grass roots collective. It's local action, by local businesses wanting to make immediate changes, from today.  
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We've been born out of a number of small businesses that have challenged the status quo around waste.  Why is recycling the best option? Why not reuse?  The answer historically has been an easy one - profit.  The cost of recovering bottles & containers in the food & beverage industry has traditionally far outweighed the efforts & costs of contributing & supporting recycling.

What if recycling was made a fall back solution? Well that's what we're building.  Since 2018 our founding member Hippie Kombucha, has been driving a change around reuse.  Refusing to send containers to the State's Containers for Change program, Hippie instead sought WA"s first and only (at the time) approval to operate as an exempted business, based on their reuse efforts.

This requires their business to not only recover, but clean, sanitise, & re-index perfectly good assets for reuse in their networks & chains.  Sure it wasn't the fastest & most financially sound decision initially, but it's leading to better business.



With over 8 million new tonnes of plastic entering our oceans every year, have we left it too long?

Inviting conscious businesses to join our growing network, share their great work, collaborate and help us move towards a world where single-use packaging is a thing of the past. ​

​We've left it to the policy ​makers for too long, and it's clear, they haven't listened & acted when they should have.  The good news is, consumers have, and are taking action.

There's a real ground-swell of conscious businesses addressing this same issue. 
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​Let's educate & collaborate. Whether you're a business that recycles, repurposes, or reuses, let's share our wins & encourage others to join the revolution of reuse - it's time to give credit to the creators, and the planet.
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Founding Member: 
​Hippie Artisan Kombucha

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Formed in 2015, Hippie Premium Pét-Nat Kombucha, has been delivering organic Kombucha to the people of Australia.

But they were challenged by the amount of waste that they saw was left behind in their production process.  Moving to sustainable packaging was part of a solution, but not the whole. 

Taking onboard the 3 key guiding principles defining circular economy design; 
  • design out waste and pollution;
  • keep products and materials in use;
  • regenerate natural systems

Hippie continue to improve as they grow.  Moving towards a circular economic model is not a destination, it's a journey, and will continue to be a moving target. 

In February 2020, they launched their circular Hippie @ Home delivery model. This provides customers the ability to return 100% of their packaging, which includes eco-liners, eco-cooling bricks, and sustainably sourced packaging, along with their 500ml glass bottles, for a refund on future orders up to $9.00. 

Managing DIrector & co-Founder Rob Whyte said, "It's time to redefine value.  We value spending less on virgin materials, we value charging less to our customers, and they value a business that cares. It's a model that works well, and feels good. We are a Kombucha business, we sell a product, we don't sell packaging.  Over the years, Marketing & Packaging messages blurred the lines. We want to bring the focus back onto what we're here to do - to sell quality healthy Kombucha to our customers. If we can cut back on the expensive adjuncts to marketing, we will, and we will happily pass this saving on to our loyal customers."

2020 has been a positive year for change for Hippie & the team. COVID-19 has shown us that people care about local producers, and the impact harmful production can have on the eco-system.  They continue to work with DWER around innovating further some guiding principles that will empower them and other producers (Food & Beverage) to look inwards and see how they can make changes towards moving away from linear production.

To contact Rob, Lead Innovation, co-Founder, click here

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Founding Member:
It's Not
​Plastic.

It's not Plastic is a social enterprise launched in Perth in 2019 with the aim of providing consumers with an eco friendly sustainable alternative to single use plastic bottles .

INP offers bottled water, cared for from end to end with the idea of nothing ever becoming "waste". Their plant based bottles, label and caps are made from a renewable and sustainable by-product of corn and sugar cane  and have the ability to be composted. They also offer collection for the bottles sold, taking responsibility for our product post-sale by allowing customers to return used bottles, ensuring that every returned bottle ends up in the correct facility, not the environment.  

With more and more businesses choosing to offer products that make a positive environmental impact, they decided to throw caution to the wind and launch in QLD in 2020.  Robert Swan, OBE said ' the greatest threat to our planet is the belief someone else will save it '.  With that bring their key message,  is the primary motivator as to why INP's bottles are made to be reused as many times as possible.

With State Governments being proactive in banning single use products, they see their bottles not as a panacea but as a much better solution to the growing amount of single use items currently on the market items such as cans , plastic bottles and cartons .
With that, they are confident they can make a positive change in the 'grab and go ' bottle water category and promote reuse and return 


To bring your store into the new economy, contact Adrian (CEO) here.

    join the rrr-evolution
    ​Get in contact with us if you can help us build a better system for the future of our next generation of leaders.

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