The Problem 

I love expressing myself through fashion. This means I have more clothes than the average student, and therefore more laundry to do as well. Despite this, I was le with over half a bottle of detergent at the end of last year. This made me realize– if even I couldn’t finish the bottle in a year, how about everyone else? The answer became apparent when I saw the pile of detergent bottles stashed in our end-of-year donation bin. 

After conducting a survey around the dorms, I learned that students' reluctance to reuse detergent boils down to its’ packaging– the design is impractical for travel (bulky and prone to spills). 

Detergent waste may seem like a niche issue - however, our boarding school of 262 students generates 1349.3 ounces of detergent waste per year. Multiply this by the millions in student housing, and the cumulative harm inflicted on our planet becomes evident, and frankly, unnecessary. Leading detergents like Tide and Gain contain surfactants, which allow more pollution to enter our sea. This issue could be avoided if we opted to use greener detergent. However, those are not readily carried in supermarket chains, and a pre-existing consumer habit is hard to break. 

Ultimately, the toxic chemicals we let out in the ocean comes full circle and end up in our stomachs. Our oblivious use of laundry detergent could harm the very future we are working hard now to build. 

Your Solution 

My solution to the unnecessary waste of detergent is Refillie. Often overlooked as a minor problem, nobody has made any attempts to tackle this issue until now. A er observing my fellow boarders and asking oddly specific questions, I understood I had to develop a system that promotes sustainability while addressing the convenience and cost concerns of students. 

Using the existing student ID card system, I collaborated with engineering students to design a prototype of a card-activated dispenser. Then, I scoured local papers and found BYOC: a zero-waste, locally-sourced detergent system located just 45 minutes away from our school. I reached out to partner with them and developed a system to bring their sustainable detergent to our school. At the start of each academic year, BYOC delivers detergent to our laundry room. Throughout the year, students use the carding system we designed to use the dispenser, and at the end of the year, Refillie volunteers clean out the detergent barrel for BYOC to pick up and resend the next year. 

This closed-loop system eliminates the need for students to buy individual bottles of detergent, preventing harmful chemicals from entering our waterways. In our dorm alone, Refillie would save 1360 oz of detergent from reaching landfills per year. Soon, we can implement this in other schools and universities too! 

Founding Story 

When the 22 school year ended, I started decluttering my dorm room. Aside from being a student, I am also a social media fashion creator under the pseudonym @v1ryse so I knew the biggest inventory would come from my closet. The first thing I did was put clothes away. As I sorted, I found half a bottle of laundry detergent on my dresser. It made me think: how much detergent did all the other students have left over? The answer revealed itself to me when I walked over to our communal trash bin. I realized it was the little things adding up to become the biggest problems for our environment. 

Your Impact 

Firstly, I’d like to scale Refillie into more schools across the country – starting with our neighbor at the University of Michigan. With 9,500 undergraduate students, it certainly is a bigger pool of fish compared to our 262 student body. That’s roughly 50,000 oz of liquid waste we could resolve per year. The owner of our affiliate company, BYOC, had previously graduated at UofM. With this connection, we hope to implement Refillie at the dorms there. Additionally,, I plan to reach out to friends living in other boarding schools as well. If interested, they could develop their own chapter of Refillie local to their school. 

Furthermore, I would assemble a dedicated team consisting of individuals with expertise in various fields, such as finance management, marketing, logistics, and sustainability. This team would work collaboratively to drive the expansion of Refillie in dorms across the globe. 

Using my previous experience with social media, I’d also create a page for Refillie to share success stories, educational content, and updates on our expansion. 

My ultimate goal for this initiative is to see Refillie adopted by dorms worldwide. Just like a pyramid of connections, I wish to expand refillie by engaging people that would spread the initiative– helping to fight for the good of our planet and the good of our future, one fresh batch of laundry at a time. 

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