Swap, Save, Sustain: The Replacer Revolution

We’re all across the idea of making lifestyle switches from healthier food choices to zero alcohol drinks to more sustainable travel. It’s a way of easing us into change, so we feel that we’re not giving up on something rather, we’re making a smart choice. It’s flattering to our fragile egos and as long as it’s frictionless and aligns with our values, we can #justdoit. With that in mind and to kick-start our 2026 thinking, Melissa Fretwell caught up with Co-Founder of Replacer Ed Perryman to find out more about what keeps him busy. 

“Replacer is essentially a platform for action for businesses. Mainly hospitality businesses at the moment although it’s designed for organisations across the service sector to go and find sustainable alternatives and suppliers. There's lots of software out there that really helps businesses with reporting and measurement. And that's all well and good, but it tends to lead to this kind of analysis paralysis if it's just used on its own. So what we're trying to do with Replacer is the action part. Less measurement and buzzwords and acronyms and more practical stuff that you can implement in your organisation that's proven to work and is accessible.”  

We hear you Ed. As marketing professionals we can lose days in data and spend meetings chatting purely in acronyms when really we just need to make a plan in plain English and act. 

“The reason that we think Replacer is a brilliant idea is because we want to make sure that millions of polluting items are never used in the first place because you do things differently. That's our mission. You know, this stuff is proven to be good for business and the planet which gets people interested. There are lots of cost savings to be had and operational efficiencies as well. Quite often there's a better customer or guest experience as a result. It helps with future proofing too because eventually more regulation and change is coming. So it's about adapting now.

One great motivator for making positive changes is the unsavoury problem of waste. Waste disposal costs are going up. It’s on track to double by, I think, 2050 globally. And then the other less tangible costs of waste in terms of guest perceptions, they are turned off by wasteful brands. Current and prospective employees are now really looking at how ethical and sustainable their employers are as well. That data is strong. So I think as that cost gets better understood alongside just the physical cost of wasting more, there's actually already just a common sense case to do better rather than waiting for the stuff to get banned even if that would help.”

I know we share our love of working with Bluestone National Park Resort and they recently published a report on Food Waste with WRAP, reflecting on some amazing savings from managing their food waste better, £77K saved which is not to be sniffed at. Tell us more about the work you’re doing with them? 

We love Bluestone. Their sustainability leaders, Marten and Declan, were Replacer's first registered users and we've learnt so much from one another. Bluestone are well known for being sustainable, but they are always pushing for more progress and the circular economy is a big focus for them now. We supported them to build a footprint of all the single-use stuff they still use, and then the various departments use Replacer to look for viable alternatives and understand the potential ROI. As an example, we're currently supporting them to build a case for switching to reusable cups.

Businesses we typically work with are hotels, conference venues, universities, museums and stadiums. The first thing is single-use items. So not just single-use plastics, that's a huge problem, but it's easier to think of it as single-use stuff in general. Customers and guests really increasingly don't like it. That's a big focus. 

Secondly, items that are typically really hard to recycle. Hotels literally send thousands of mattresses to incineration every week globally because they're made of all these mixed materials. Actually now we’re starting to see innovation in that area and there's all sorts of other things that fall into that bucket like furniture, key cards, bigger pieces of electronic kit, and decorations to name but a few.

A third area we focused on is harmful chemicals. Almost all organisations and businesses have to clean as part of their service and the frequency of cleaning is high, everything gets cleaned daily. There are loads of harmful chemicals used for fast results across the board. When you get into it there’s always a sustainable switch. Naturally derived products that are actually increasingly working just as well. Similarly for shampoos and shower gels you'd find in a hotel room, there's lots of really innovative startups producing some great, aspirational alternatives. Sometimes it means working with some smaller companies rather than your big wholesalers or providers. But there's loads of options.

Fourthly appliances or processes that use lots of energy or lots of water. Obviously a really big and broad area. For energy this can include things like lighting, appliances in commercial kitchens, heating and (increasingly) air conditioning. It can also mean wholesale change like getting more of your energy from renewables or investing in things like smart sensors. Water saving could be looking at your cleaning setup, bathroom fittings, or how your swimming pool and spa functions if you have one of those!

And the last one I would say is replacing things that are sourced from far away, but often nobody knows quite why. Food and beverage has been notorious for this, using ingredients off season with insanely high air miles. Maybe just because that's always how it's been done, but there's an option to source more locally and support your local community as well. 

We get the most excited when the whole circle happens locally. For example, someone collects what's normally perceived as a waste product, upcycles it into something innovative that then gets kind of resold again in the local community. That's when we start jumping up and down with joy.

Take Grounds for Good, based in Wales (lots of good circular economy stuff coming out of Wales!); they take used coffee grounds from hospitality venues, upcycle them locally into lovely products, from reusable cups, to doorstops to premium gin and vodka, and then sell them again locally. Love it!

We are bookmarking https://groundsforgood.co.uk people, they even have coffee infused rapeseed oil, the gift for that pal who has everything. Genius. 

Ed continues; “as co-founders, where we get most frustrated is where there's lots of meetings, good ideas, committees, plans and it doesn't get signed off. It just stays as an abstract idea and then next year they're talking about the same things again. The Eureka moment comes when businesses understand the return on investment and then people start talking about the impact. 

Notpla is a great example of innovation with seaweed. They have recently launched liquid packaging; edible gel for runners and then there’s the food oil pipettes all 100% biodegradable too. It's almost a Willy Wonka moment. You can really catch people's attention and enhance your brand.”

Moving on then to the big business of Davos. One of the themes this year is, "How can we build prosperity within planetary boundaries?" How do you think Replacer could fit into this?

"To actually achieve prosperity and well-being within planetary boundaries, which by the way I see as distinct from just growth and profit, certain industries like fossil fuels, fast fashion and industrial beef must decline. To pretend that we can grow on all fronts and remain within planetary boundaries, just doesn't stack up for us. But what we get really excited about is the reuse economy. It is estimated to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars and that's in just the very near future. It’s a massive opportunity. I think the circular economy and sustainable alternatives more broadly is a huge economy. We see our jobs as championing the people within this space that are actually credible. Their claims stack up whether they're startups or big companies. It's our job and our responsibility to tell their story and put them in front of as big an audience as possible, whether that's hotels or workplaces or offices. That's where we come in.

Replacer customers are the solution providers, the gateway to these alternatives. If they grow and prosper, their solutions  inherently work within planetary boundaries rather than overshooting them. We're trying to create that kind of ecosystem rather than an economy.

The World Economic Forum presented the argument that the world should transition to nature-positive business models to unlock $10 trillion (around €8.6 trillion) annually by 2030. And then there’s one private jet flight per four WEF participants. Madness. Replacer can help event organisers produce events in a way that's as sustainable as possible and leaves as little footprint as possible." 

"If you could make sure Tottenham win the Champions League, that would be good. But I think even a magic wand wouldn't be able to do that. We need to move so much faster with bolder legislation. It's been quite a carbon centric conversation for years, but we need more focus on waste, single-use plastics, that type of thing. What's proven time and time again is when materials get banned or directives happen with fair warning, businesses adapt and and still operate, make profit and and grow. The EU tends to be more forward thinking when it comes to a circular economy which is encouraging. I just hope that the UK and other parts of the world follow because it will take years off of the process of change."

We have one foot in Spain and the other in the UK, do you have any plans to venture over here?  

"Spain is still the number one holiday destination for Brits coming here and it’s kind of my second home, so I plan to be here periodically, bringing my family and Replacer with me. We’ve dipped a toe in the water already. We've got some great hotel groups and consultants using the platform. Hospitality and Tourism in Spain is, of course, massive bringing the same kind of challenges. There is a really great community of like-minded people doing interesting things, you might call them change-makers with whom we have a mutually beneficial relationship. The more we can build out flagship use cases the more we can traction beyond the UK and ramp up our presence in Europe. 

Bluestone National Park in Wales is a great example we’d love to replicate in Spain. They gave us lots of their time helping set up Replacer for success. They have been a really important part of the journey. As Marten Lewis the Director of Sustainability at Bluestone points out: 

"Even at this early stage we have already used insights and data from the Replacer software to help us build business cases for projects that will see us progress our circular economy journey."

And the even better news is that any business can go and sign up for free at replacer.com . It takes 30 seconds to get in there and start browsing stuff. Simple as that."

We’ve already found out that globally, we throw away 9 billion pens every year—a staggering 24.6 million every single day. So don't give them away, let’s lend them, switch to pencils or bring back the fountain pen. Us stationery geeks love the range of coloured ink cartridges. 

For anyone curious to find out more about working with Replacer, drop Ed a line here: ed@replacer.com. And for those who have a great brand story to tell but are not sure where to begin, message melissa.fretwell@whitecamino.com.