Since 2003, our team has offered our liquids - Organic Oils, Organic Vinegars, Organic Maple Syrup, Honey, Organic Agave Nectar, Organic Molasses, and Organic Nut & Seed Butters - in reused glass and plastic containers. And with your support you've returned roughly 76% of those containers and we've washed and refilled them - returning them to you again and again. The total weight of those containers add up to about 330,000 lbs - that is the weight of a giant blue whale (out of the water).
Our container return program is one of those rare systems that’s both beautifully simple and legitimately impactful.
What the Program Actually is...
At its core, Hummingbird runs an award-winning deposit-return, reuse system for the containers their products come in. Bulk liquids (oils, vinegars, sweeteners, etc.) are sold in reusable glass and food-grade plastic containers. Customers pay a small deposit, then get it back when they return the empty container. Hummingbird cleans, sanitizes, and refills those same containers for reuse.
Our program has been running since 2003, and it’s not a side project—it’s baked into how we do business.
Why it's Winning Awards
It’s won awards and earned recognition (like National Co+op Grocer and Climate Collaborative's Outstanding Value Chain Award) because it hits the “triple bottom line,”
- Environmental impact
- Economic viability
- Community participation
And the numbers back it up:
We have estimated the weight of glass and plastic returned, cleaned and reused to weigh 330,000 lbs. That is a 76% return rate. That’s a massive amount of packaging kept out of the waste stream.
It makes so much sense sustainably. Reuse beats recycling (by a mile). Recycling sounds good, but it’s actually pretty resource-heavy. It requires collecting, sorting, transporting, energy to melt materials at extremely high temperatures, then remanufactures new containers
By contrast, reuse is basically, wash → sanitize → refill. That’s it. In fact, refilling a glass container can save up to ~90% of the energy compared to recycling it .
The impact compounds over time. Here’s the underrated magic. Every additional reuse multiplies the benefit.
We've found that energy savings increase sharply the more times a container is reused.
So a jar reused 10 times isn’t just 10x better—it’s exponentially more efficient than making 10 new jars. It directly reduces single-use packaging. Most food packaging is single-use plastic—and a lot of it never actually gets recycled.
Hummingbird’s System
- Keeps containers in a closed loop
- Prevents them from becoming landfill or ocean waste
- Reduces demand for new plastic and glass production
That’s upstream impact, not just damage control.
It also aligns incentives (this part is genius). The deposit system makes sustainability easy and rewarding. Customers are financially motivated to return containers. Stores participate as collection points - getting customer to return again and again. And we get a steady stream of reusable packaging. No guilt, no preaching—just a system that works.
It’s Scalable and Proven
This isn’t a pilot program—it’s been running for 23 years. And systems like this are already common in parts of Europe (milk bottles, beer bottles), where they’ve proven to be more energy efficient, more cost effective long-term, and highly adoptable by consumers
This program quietly challenges a big assumption. “Recycling is the solution.”
Our model shows: Reuse > Recycling > Landfill
Or put more bluntly, you can’t recycle your way out of a waste problem—but you can design waste out of the system.
If you’re thinking about how to talk about this (marketing, customer education, etc.), the strongest angle isn’t just “less waste”—it’s “this is a smarter system,” because it is.