Ivan Rangel of reuse company Happen Ventures said he got an unusual call from retailer Burlington. The chain had a sample shoe surplus to get rid of. The shoes were in great condition, but there was only one from each pair.
“Who wants one shoe?” asked Rangel, who is the company’s chief of staff. But he made some calls, and he found a nonprofit that serves amputee veterans to distribute the shoes for use. “We were able to take all those shoes,” Rangel said Friday at the Annual Recycling & Organics Conference of the Professional Recyclers of Pennsylvania (PROP) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Rangel said the goal of his company is to keep as much as possible out of landfills, from durable goods to hazardous materials.
“Before we think about recycling or throwing away, we should think reuse,” he said. “It’s helping our communities and easing the burden on local landfills. Right now, if you go to a landfill it is crazy how much stuff you see that can be reused by people in need.”
Rangel said his company’s goal is to make reuse the standard. “A lot of companies think recycling first, but they should think reuse because there are many benefits to that,” he said. His team often tries to do this by making connections between nonprofits and municipalities or companies.
Happen Ventures tries to keep costs for sending material to reuse on par with the costs of recycling or landfilling. Sometimes it’s even cheaper, he noted. One of the biggest costs involved in donations is transportation, so Happen Ventures tries to work with nonprofits that are local to the material source as much as possible.
In another recent example, the company took a stack of excess pillowcases and turned them into care packages for female inmates. In another project, 20 tons of excess fiberglass created by a windmill manufacturer got diverted from a landfill to another manufacturer that could use it. When another client had a large amount of excess citric acid, Rangel connected them to a manufacturer in Ukraine that was having trouble sourcing such materials because of the ongoing war.
Rangel said his company is in its fourth year of operation, and it now has 29 employees. The business is expanding into Mexico and Canada. It currently lists addresses in Newark, New Jersey and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
“Recycling is incredibly important and we need it, but we need to think about reuse,” said Elizabeth Bower, the owner and founder of Refillism, a refill store in York, Pennsylvania, at the PROP conference. At her shop, customers can purchase a range of home and personal care products, ideally by bringing in their own containers for refilling.
“As an overall society, we need to think about refilling as part of waste reduction,” Bower said.
Long popular in Europe, more and more refill stores are popping up around the US. Bower said the key is building habits among consumers. Refilling product containers reduces single-use plastics and waste overall. “Waste reduction doesn’t begin at the recycling bin. It begins when people are thinking about a purchase,” she said.
Refillism’s prices are often cheaper than the costs of conventional products as long as people bring their own containers, Bower said. The company’s popular multipurpose cleaner costs $3 for 10 ounces. Hand soaps are 40 cents per weight ounce.
“I tell people to pick one area where you might want to try it out,” said Bower.
“Usually, that’s in the kitchen or laundry.”
The biggest barrier to getting new customers is the inconvenience of having to go to a separate shop, said Bower. “We live in a convenience culture. It is so easy to just grab the new bottle on the shelf (at your local supermarket or big box store).”
Yet, once people come into Refillism and try the products, many “get hooked,” she said.
“You realize it’s not that complicated.” The store also has an online shop.
Another selling point is the store’s scent bar, in which people can add their own favorite scents to a range of products.
“My hope is that places like Refillism are recognized as partners in waste reduction,” said Bower.
