The Isle of Harris Distillery Launches: The Refill Project

A subscription service for high-end refillable aluminium bottles for Harris Gin to replace its glass bottles.

Isle of Harris Distillery Refill Bottle
Harris Gin and Refill Bottle
Harris Gin Refill Bottle

Our story

The Refill Project was created to address the growing demand from customers to allow them to keep the award-winning, treasured glass Isle of Harris Gin bottle instead of throwing it out. Although the glass bottle is fully recyclable, the beauty of the design makes it difficult for customers to ways part with it. Isle of Harris Distillery began exploring the potential of new refill solutions by experimenting with aluminum as a high-quality material with exceptional recyclability, lightness, and excellent carbon footprint figures. The result is the new 500ml Refill Bottle, designed to refill the much-loved glass Isle of Harris Gin bottle when it’s time to top-up.

The new Refill Bottle is only available through a limited annual subscription service initially as the first stages of the refill project begins. The 1 year subscription service includes...

• A 500ml aluminum Refill Bottle of Isle of Harris Gin sent direct to your door, cutting the carbon emissions of transport by delivering straight from distillery to customer and providing a durable, recyclable alternative to our sought-after glass bottles.

• 1 of 12 Isle of Harris landscape photographic postcards by Peter Kwasniewski to collect and keep, a unique keepsake encouraging our customers to subscribe to a carbon-cutting way to enjoy our gin.

• An exclusive shop offer code to use with 1 of 12 specially chosen independent island partners, supporting our local community.

• Our monthly Harris Eco E-Newsletter sent to your inbox with environmental stores and additional offers, reducing our use of printable literature, the resources involved and the carbon cost of postage.

• The first bottle is free, so our customers can enjoy a more eco-friendly service with a special gift from us.

The bottle is wrapped with a tissue paper which is FSC certified, acid-free paper, and printed with eco-friendly low VOC soy inks. The tissue paper is sourced from a forest and supply chain that is managed responsibly and sustainably and can be recycled, composted, or reused. The tissue paper uses the exact Pantone colour used in the glass bottle’s base tint.

The Refill Bottle will be delivered in a Jiffy Green bag, lined with high performance, cushioning paper fibres instead of plastic bubbles making them fully biodegradable, recyclable, and compostable.

For further information on the Refill Project please visit: Harrisdistillery.com/pages/refill

Our advice

“We’ve been looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint without losing the pleasure of pouring from our lovely gin bottle. We learnt that aluminum can be the most recyclable of materials and so this new subscription service looks like a great solution” – Simon Erlanger, Managing Director, Isle of Harris Distillery.

Our metrics

Aluminium is one of the most recycled materials available for packaging today, with 75% of aluminium ever produced still in circulation, compared to just 9% of all plastics. As such, recycling aluminium saves production and energy costs and reduces the significant negative impacts that the extraction and processing of virgin materials has on the environment.
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