First-of-its-Kind Fund Aims to Catalyze Equitable Access to Reuse and Refill Solutions

The $1M fund aims to finance deployment of reuse and refill infrastructure — particularly in FMCG, food service and delivery, grocery, e-commerce and retail — to combat global plastic pollution.

Published 8 months ago | About a 3 minute read

Image: Repurpose Global

Today, Repurpose Global, a platform that empowers businesses to eliminate plastic pollution and accelerate circular solutions, launches its Reuse Outcomes Fund — a $1 million fund designed to catalyze equitable access to reuse and refill solutions, leveraging outcomes-based financing to address the global plastic pollution crisis.

Plastic pollution poses a significant threat to all life on Earth. According to a recent UN report, Turning off the Tap, transitioning to a truly circular economy represents the most effective approach to combating plastic pollution — with an approximately 70 percent reduction achievable through reuse, refill and new delivery models. And a November 2023 report from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Unlocking a Reuse Revolution, asserts that scaling a reusable-packaging economy could lower both GHGs and water use by up to 35-70 percent compared with our current, linear model still dependent on single-use plastics.

However, the reuse movement encounters several complex barriers — including inadequate infrastructure, high cost of adoption, and a lack of access to flexible financing for early-stage innovators — which have hindered widespread adoption.

The Reuse Outcomes Fund aims to finance the deployment of critically lacking reuse and refill infrastructure — especially focusing on engaging consumer goods sectors with high single-use plastic intensity such as FMCG, food service and delivery, retail and e-commerce. Within these sectors, the new fund will target three promising solution archetypes:

infrastructure for refilling water and other beverages
reuse & reverse-logistics models for food and grocery delivery
and returnable packaging in e-commerce and physical retail.

“At Repurpose Global, bringing people together to create systems change against the most pressing social and environmental issues facing our world has been our mission from day one, and this new commitment to advancing the reuse movement is a timely and critical extension of that mission,” said CEO & co-founder Svanika Balasubramanian.

The Reuse Outcomes Fund is dedicated to creating a circular economy accessible to all — with a particular focus on solution models that serve low- and middle-income communities in the United States, Canada and India. The new fund will also operate based on a pioneering theory of change revolving around Outcomes-Based Financing — a blended-finance approach in which, unlike traditional philanthropy or profit-oriented investments, Repurpose Global will fund the implementation of reuse solutions with the sole objective of achieving measurable, additional and verifiable environmental outcomes (e.g. tonnage of plastic waste avoided), prioritizing impact return over financial return, in an effort to ensure that the most effective and impactful solutions receive the support they need.

In addition to scaling solutions directly, the Reuse Outcomes Fund will also aim to tackle systemic challenges associated with increasing penetration of reuse and refill. As a part of the Fund, Repurpose Global will help advance the development of high-integrity frameworks and implementation standards, aimed at guiding the scale-up of waste-reduction models worldwide. The organization will also build knowledge repositories that document project-implementation best practices, making them transferable and replicable.

“Imagine a world where everything we use can be given another life — where fridges stocked with single-use products are replaced with refill stations in every convenience store you walk into, and where the ‘Milk Man’ model of delivering essential goods is the norm as opposed to the exception,“ shared Peter Wang Hjemdahl, Chief Innovation Officer & co-founder at Repurpose Global. “This vision, where reuse beats single-use and is accessible not only globally but for all strata of society, is the guiding philosophy that underpins our new Reuse Outcomes Fund.”