Shoppers in Bedford encouraged to say goodbye to packaging as Refill campaign expands free app

From today (October 1), you'll be able to use a free app to find places to refill your coffee cup, lunchbox, groceries, cleaning products and toiletries in the town.

Plastic pollution campaigning organisation City to Sea hopes expanding the app will take its Refill campaign to the next level.

It says last year, research revealed that 75 per cent of the British public bought their lunch on-the-go each day, generating 11billion items of packaging waste a year – that’s a whopping 276 items per person every year.

Rebecca Burgess, CEO of City to Sea said: “The expansion of Refill marks a positive and significant step in tackling the mountains of avoidable single-use waste created everyday.

"Refill has already proven that buying habits can change. Last year the bottled water industry reported their first decline in sales (£34.2million loss) after significant growth for the last five years.”

The app already connects people with 30,000 locations for free drinking water, including more than 20 in Bedford and now includes locations such as zero-waste shops, plastic-free retailers like butchers, bakers and greengrocers and large chains such as Costa and Morrisons, which operate instore refill options.

Cory Walker, community lead for the Refill scheme in Bedford, said: “This is such an exciting refresh of the Refill campaign and I cannot wait for local businesses to be a part of a now bigger scheme which focuses on more than bottle refills.”

To download the app visit here