Meet The New ‘Reuse’ Symbol

A global alliance of businesses, governments and designers just unveiled a universal mark for reuse and it could reshape how the world handles waste.

Like the Coca-Cola logo, the McDonald’s arches and the iconic ‘I©NY’, the global recycling symbol is known the world over. The three chasing arrows folded over in a Mobius strip was first seen by the public on Earth Day in 1970 and created by 23-year-old student Gary Anderson for corrugated box company the Container Corporation of America. Decades later, the design has hardly changed but now there’s a new logo on the block which aims to shift the focus from recycling to reusing.

The Reuse Revolution

The new symbol is designed to identify reusable packaging and reuse systems across the world. Its purpose is to become the internationally recognised logo for reusing, marking a diverse range of reusable products such as cups, food containers, wine bottles and cleaning products, which can be reused rather than thrown away.

The hope is that the new symbol will reduce the use of virgin material, retain packaging materials within the economy for as long as possible and dramatically reduce the amount of plastic waste and its associated pollution. While recycling is clearly a better option than throwing packaging into the standard waste stream, reusing is accepted as the most effective strategy to reduce plastic pollution.

According to a 2022 OECD report, the amount of plastic waste produced globally is on track to almost triple by 2060, with around half ending up in landfill. Meanwhile, the 2026 Big Plastic Count by the charity Everyday Plastic estimates that UK households discard 13 billion pieces of plastic fruit and vegetable packaging a year, with two-thirds of it sent for incineration rather than recycling.

“The Big Plastic Count has shown that plastic production is out of control, with billions of pieces of plastic being thrown away every week,” said Daniel Webb, founder of Everyday Plastic. “Recycling cannot keep up with the volume being produced, and we’re incinerating more than ever. We can’t burn our way out of this.”

The Circle Of Life

The new reuse symbol was launched by PR3: The Global Alliance to Advance Reuse, an international coalition of businesses, governments, NGOs, designers and reuse operators, which hosted a design initiative in 2025 with an open call for designs. This call attracted 236 submissions from 29 countries.

Chosen after multiple rounds of jury review and market testing with roughly 1,275 people across 17 countries, the winner of the competition was Epigrama Studios, a creative practice in Bogotá, which retains the arrow theme but as part of spiral forming the letter ‘R’.

“We wanted to create a symbol that communicates return, continuity and circulation – something simple enough to travel globally but meaningful enough to represent a new relationship with materials and waste,” said Juan Navarrete, Co-Founder of Epigrama Studios. “The symbol understands time not as a straight line but as a spiral – returning, restoring and beginning again.”

A New Global Solution

While there have been small-scale initiatives created by brands and organisations before, designed to push people towards reusing rather than recycling, the international roll-out of this new symbol and accompanying reuse systems appears to have genuine scale and backing. PR3 has convened a panel of more than 80 organisations, including multinational companies, plastic producers and local environmental departments, with pilots planned across more than a dozen countries, including the US, the UK and Canada.

“Recycling is still single-use and requires re-manufacturing of the package,” says Amy Larkin, Co-Founder and Director of PR3. “Reuse systems keep a package in circulation, from 10 to up to 100 uses, before it is finally recycled and re-manufactured for another round of uses. The PR3 Global Standards for reuse and the new symbol give people a clear way to recognise reuse systems – and trust them.”

To find out more about the new reuse symbol, go to pr3standards.org/the-reuse-symbol

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