For years, Guide Dogs' charity donation tubs sat on counters in corner shops, petrol stations and businesses across the country, collecting small donations that made a big difference.
But when the network was retired, the charity faced a familiar question: what happens to all those tubs once they are no longer needed?
Recycling was the planned end of life route, but we saw an opportunity to go a step further.
Rather than simply processing the plastic into recycled material, could we turn it into something new?
Keeping the material in circulation
The tubs were made from thermoforming plastic, meaning the material could be chipped down and recast.
That opened the door to a genuinely circular approach.
Working with Guide Dogs, we took the reclaimed plastic and transformed it into a range of new objects designed specifically to be sold through the charity's ecommerce store.
The original donation tubs therefore became something completely different, while the material itself remained in circulation.
Waste becomes purpose
The project delivered more than just a new use for old plastic.
By creating products from the reclaimed material, Guide Dogs gained a new potential revenue stream while being able to tell a tangible sustainability story to its supporters.
The journey was simple:
Donation tub → reclaimed material → new product → new revenue for the charity.
It is a small scale example of what a circular economy can look like in practice, keeping materials useful for longer, reducing the need for virgin material and finding new value in something that might otherwise have reached the end of its useful life.
A small tub.
A big idea.