closed loop, zero waste refill system

  • from the press

    Our 20 litre tubs come directly from the producers around the village of Armeni, filled at the village press.

    1

  • into your bottle

    You can re-fill your Honest Toil or fill your own bottle when shopping at our zero waste shop partners throughout the UK.

    2

  • cleaned and refilled

    Empty tubs are collected, cleaned and refilled with the help of SESI Refill, to supply you with fresh oil all over again.

    3

We can’t quite lay a pipe to connect our trees to your table, but we can set the rigorous goal of completely package-free olive oil nonetheless. Here’s how...

From the very beginning, we've tried hard to make sure that the oil ending up on your table requires as little packaging as possible. It was initially quite a struggle to find bottles that could be used again and again, as most olive oil bottles have a single-use pourer with the expectation that they're thrown away - or at best, recycled - when empty. In contrast, the sturdy swing-top bottles we chose encourage people to refill and reuse them. 

As pioneers in the zero waste revolution, we’ve been collaborating with zero-waste shops for packaging-free supply since 2012. After several years of searching for a truly closed-loop, 100% zero waste solution, we teamed up with the Oxford-based social enterprise SESI Refill.Together we developed a unique circular refill system, where SESI delivers, collects, and cleans our 20 litre tubs to be refilled with our extra virgin olive oil again and again. Soon after, we created a similar system in Hungary with the help of Grapoila.

If you’re a zero waste shop interested in joining our refill campaign, we’d love to hear from you!

Honest Toil & SESI Refill guarantee a low-carbon, zero waste weekly delivery, by collecting your empty 20L containers every time we deliver our products to you. If you're interested in becoming a stockist, just give us a shout and we'll get back to you asap. 

PARTNER WITH US
Cold Pressed
High Polyphenol
Fresh Harvest
Small Batch

In order to comply with current regulations, our olive-oil-on-tap is sold as “infused with a pinch of black pepper”, which doesn’t affect the flavour or quality of the oil in any way. In 2014, wide-ranging measures were introduced to try and combat scandalous fraud in the olive oil industry. These measures included a ban on the sale of non-infused extra virgin olive oil on tap. Unfortunately, this regulation hasn't done much to stop the big-scale monopolies diluting their olive oil before bottling, but instead means that independent, ethical small businesses now have to jump through hoops in order to be able to sell a pure product; as we aim to supply the fruits of our toil with as minimal packaging as possible, we’ve reluctantly decided to "infuse" our oil with a pinch of cracked black pepper in order to comply with the law. We’re hoping that this is a temporary necessity and that the sale of unblended, unpackaged extra virgin olive oil will soon be legal again.