Let's talk waste for a minute.
One of the unfortunate circumstances of our industry is that to date, there has been little progress in the development of bulk containers suitable for carrying essential oils and carrier oils. The volatile compounds that exist in essential oils can react with certain plastics and compromise the integrity of the oil and the stability of the packaging itself. This is why we choose to use glass and aluminium for essential oil transport.
For carrier oils, extracts, waters and bases the plastic we need to use is a PET which is the best in terms of strength and durability as well as providing a safe house for the short to long term storage of our products.
We understand that as a country, our recycling facilities are just not able to process the amount of plastic we consume, and new initiatives are required to help reduce the amount of plastic ending up in landfill and our very important eco-systems.
As part of our REfill, REimagine, REstore, REthink initiative we've launched a free REturns option for our customers where you can safely send back your used plastic and aluminium packaging (sorry no glass) and we'll put it to REuse.
When your packaging gets back to us it goes through the following steps:
1) Items are sorted into packaging types
2) Packaging is then cleaned and sterilised using an all-natural dish cleaner combined with hydrogen peroxide followed by an ethanol soak
3) Packaging is then air dried in a closed environment and made available for reuse across the earthYARD range
4) If packaging after sterilisation is no longer safe for reuse it will be sent to one of our plastic recycling experts who use these seconds to make NEW plastic packaging (rPETS) made from 100% recycled material
5) earthYARD then buys back the new rPETS and the cycle begins again
We would love for all our customers to become a part of our journey to improve our carbon footprint and reduce what we choose to consume.
There are a few conditions if you want to take part, as always the road to self-improvement is not without it's challenges. These conditions are as follows:
1) Please try to keep your returns box as close to 10kg where possible. This helps us to further reduce carbon footprints by combining multiple shipments into one.
2) The honesty system, we trust you and you trust us. Please do not send us back other packaging that did not originally come from us. If this occurs we will not be able to continue to offer this service.
3) Please, no glass. Glass is super fragile and when not shipped correctly can break in transit. At this time we do not have a complete solution in place for glass recycling but bare with us as we work through this part.
4) Lids and All. Yes please send back the lids. It helps if they're on the bottles tightly. This stops and leakages of residues left over in the bottles.
5) Where possible, a pre-rinse and dry before sending is helpful. If you have a little oil left over in the packaging you can try and remove this with hot soapy water and an air dry before placing into a box.
That's it. It isn't a lot of conditions really, and we can all work to improve this process together as we learn along the way. Let's close this loop a little more and try it out. Besides, trying something is better than not trying at all.
Cool! So how do you send your stuff back?
1) Fill a medium to large box (roughly 30x30x40 or the size of an archive box) with your semi-cleaned used packaging.
2) Tape it up to seal it.
3) Click on the link below or the PACKAGING RETURNS link from inside the My Account page once logged in
4) Pop in your details and print out your label
5) Take your box to a post office or Australia Post drop-off centre - that's it!
https://return.auspost.com.au/EARTHYARD
If you have any questions about this new initiative of ours please do not hesitate to drop us an email at earthyard@gmail.com
For some other cool ideas about what you can do with your used plastics see our ideas page here. Thanks so much for helping us reduce plastic waste!