World Refill Day took place on 16th June 2022 – and we were official sponsors. This global event (created by our charity partners, Refill and City to Sea) aims to create a wave of change by encouraging people to reuse and refill – and this year called out the world’s biggest corporate polluters to finally break free from single-use plastic.
The world's addiction to single-use plastic is out of control. Society produces more than 400 million tonnes of plastic waste every year*, and our recycling system can’t keep up – creating environmental and humanitarian crises along the way. That’s why on this year's World Refill Day, we teamed up with the charity City to Sea, in a nationwide campaign challenging 'big water' companies to ditch their single-use plastic bottles, and embrace reusables instead.
We asked three of the UK’s most popular ‘big water’ brands to stop shying away from their responsibility to the planet and change their ways. Throughout the day, we commissioned three ad-vans to visit the offices of evian, Highland Spring and Fiji Water – each vehicle adorned with our open letter asking the brand in question to switch away from single-use plastic. We also put up posters in east London, for everyone to see.
And that’s not all that happened on World Refill Day. A global coalition of over 400 international organisations delivered an open letter demanding that the world’s five biggest plastic polluters (Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestle and Procter & Gamble) finally commit to 'transparent, ambitious and accountable reuse and refill systems'.
Led by City to Sea and Break Free From Plastic, the letter was signed by Chilly’s, alongside other household names including The WI and the Muslim Council of Britain, plus a line-up of leading environmental NGOs such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Break Free From Plastic. The letter asks polluters to say goodbye to single-use plastics, and embrace reusable products, like Chilly’s water bottles, cups and pots.
So this year, along with challenging the big brands to change, we call on you to commit to the refill movement! If we all make small changes, we can create a big impact.
