Take a quick look at the ingredients in the Personal Care products in your catalog, I’ll wait. You’re probably not that surprised that one of the main ingredients is water. Now, take a quick glance at the cleaning products under your sink at home, water makes up a large portion of those, too. So, what’s the big deal? It’s carbon emissions.
Think about the carbon emissions that are the result of shipping the water in those products all over the country—from manufacturers to distributors to your clients, or even to your house. It’s a massive amount of shipping. You can begin to see the problem. Emissions from shipping water that is available just steps away from you, whether you are at work, or at home, is a problem that needs a solution.
Of course, the water (and personal care products) that you’re shipping are also packaged in plastic. A new study in the scientific journal Nature found that at the current pace of production, the global plastics industry will contribute to 15% of total greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. According to Euromonitor, 8.9 million tons of plastic are created each year between the personal care and home care industries. As we have discussed here before, relatively little of this plastic is recycled and instead ends up in landfills and our waterways. “We can’t recycle our way out of this problem,” says Sanders Defruyt, the lead for the new plastics economy at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which is focused on accelerating the transition to a circular economy. In fact, I love this quote from their website: “We need to totally rethink our products to focus on reusable packaging.”
So, what IS this SIMPLE solution to both not shipping water, and sustainable packaging? It’s really pretty basic, and it’s called “tabletizing.” Tabletizing is the concept of manufacturing cleaning and personal care products that come in tablet form, and ready to go into recycled containers. You just add water at home. To get an idea of how this works, check out Blueland cleaning products, Dazz cleaning sprays, and Bottle Bright, which actually got a jumpstart as a private label brand on Shark Tank. It’s pretty exciting stuff.
Blueland is selling a $30 starter kit that comes with three recycled acrylic spray bottles, along with three tablets that you mix with water to create multi-surface, bathroom, and window cleaners. When those are gone, you order refill tablets, which are $2 apiece. More sustainable cleaning and personal care products will be released over the next few months.
“A lot of people see sustainable products on the market and automatically assume they are going to be more work, more expensive, and a lot less effective,” Sarah Paiji, Blueland’s founder, told TechCrunch. “Our goal is to dispel all of these ideas by designing products that are actually easier to use, cheaper, and more efficacious. When you put a new tablet in the bottle, you don’t even need to shake it, since it dissolves on its own.”
The refills are 300 times lighter and 200 times smaller than traditional packaging for cleaning supplies. “Just from a shipping perspective alone we cut out 90% because one-to-one we’re that much smaller,” says Paiji.
More mainstream eco-friendly products like Seventh Generation sell concentrated cleaners so the products last longer, but the tablets are plastic-free and so much lighter. That’s where they can deliver significant environmental impact, as they can create a massive savings on emissions. The leap to tabletizing doesn’t seem to be that big—consumers have used them in laundry and dishwashing applications for a long time. Think about it. Would your personal care clients consider mouthwash tablets to replace the traditional bottled version? By Humankind just released this new product. It’s 60 tablets in a refillable container (that’s guaranteed for life) for $9.95, and $1 of your container purchase also goes towards cleaning plastic out of the oceans. Bite has created tablet toothpaste, all natural and plastic-free. I think this is just the beginning of something really big, and I also believe that consumers are beyond ready to make this move. Recycling is a baby step, taking action to protect the environment, reduce emissions, and use products that make a heck of a lot more sense is something to get excited about.
The concept of tabletizing is not some far-fetched solution to the issues of more responsible logistics and sustainable packaging, these are real life products that you and your clients can try for yourselves. There even is a margin and marketing hook to spark interest in giving it a try. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is committed to making the case that reusable packaging is more profitable for a company. By buying a brand’s reusable bottle, the Foundation says, the early adopters are investing in feeling good about making a difference. They’ll be more inclined to come back to that brand for refills going forward, which in turn drives brand loyalty. Not just doing something good for themselves, but doing something good for the planet, at the same time. What client of yours wouldn’t want to do that?
Jeff Jacobs has been an expert in building brands and brand stewardship for 40 years, working in commercial television, Hollywood film and home video, publishing, and promotional brand merchandise. He’s a staunch advocate of consumer product safety and has a deep passion and belief regarding the issues surrounding compliance and corporate social responsibility. He retired as executive director of Quality Certification Alliance, the only non-profit dedicated to helping suppliers provide safe and compliant promotional products. Before that, he was director of brand merchandise for Michelin. You can find him volunteering as a Guardian ad Litem, traveling the world with his lovely wife, or enjoying a cigar at his favorite local cigar shop. Connect with Jeff on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Instagram, or reach out to him at jacobs.jeffreyp@gmail.com.