Problems sachets cause in lower-income countries have been recognised for years, but finding a solution isn’t easy.

Consumers there have for decades been educated to use disposable sachets and now have an ingrained buy and dispose culture.

Traditional refill-reuse habits have faded and there are now precious few circular systems to build on.

Consumers also now have their preferred brands and sachets are the only affordable way to buy them.

On top of it all, we have the daunting 1 penny price point.

But linear supply chains can be inefficient. For example, some products sold in UK supermarkets are made deep in eastern Europe. Ready-to-use plastic containers are shipped perhaps 1000 miles on trucks and the packaging is used once then dumped. Perhaps similar inefficiencies exist in low-income countries?

In recent years Less has operated a refill-reuse system, and we started to wonder if reuse could be part of the solution to sachets.

Perhaps by shipping bulk close to consumers and refilling locally, you could avoid shipping ready-to-use containers from distant factories and save on transport and inventory costs?

Maybe a robust reuse system could enable packaging costs to be spread over hundreds of uses such that unit packaging costs would largely melt away.

And if we could hit or beat the sachet price point, maybe consumers would switch. After all, they’re concerned about plastic waste too, it’s just that their suppliers don’t give them a choice to purchase more responsibly.

The more we thought about it, the more it seemed feasible.

Beating the sachet became our goal and this blog is our story of how well we’re doing (or not!).