Zero packaging personal care: Soapbottle paves the way to waste-free hygiene products

17 Jan 2020 --- As the packaging industry is striving for better alternatives to packaging waste, product designer Jonna Breitenhuber found a way to eliminate shampoo bottle packaging entirely. Her graduating master thesis from the University of Arts in Berlin, Germany, yielded Soapbottle, a soap-based shampoo bottle. Once both the shampoo and the surrounding soap bottle shell are used up, waste can be avoided altogether. Breitenhuber tells PackagingInsights more about the future potential of this innovation in the personal care packaging sector.

“Through my work as a packaging designer for cosmetic products, I became aware that there is hardly any plastic-free packaging for liquid personal care products. Many people are looking for environmentally-friendly alternatives and the awareness for sustainability is getting stronger and stronger,” Breitenhuber affirms.

The soap-based shampoo bottle is slowly used up. Aiming to strive beyond the progress bio-based plastics have achieved, Breitenhuber identified a problematic association with the hygienic products being packaged in materials used only for a few weeks but requiring hundreds of years until they decompose. “Therefore, I wanted to work on this problem in my master thesis,” she maintains.

Besting R&D challenges
Creating an equally sustainable bottle cap or closure remains a challenge in the packaging industry. Soapbottle circumvents this issue – without using plastic. “Soapbottle can be opened by cutting off the marked corner to create a spout. The bottle can be opened with a knife and remains unsealed for the duration of use,” Breitenhuber explains.

Alternatively, a cap can be used, she continues. “When the cap is pressed down for the first time, the bottle is cut open. The reusable cap is punched from a 0.5 mm thick stainless steel sheet and pressed into shape. Since the cap consists of only one material, the later recycling is uncomplicated.”

Breitenhuber says different fragrances and variations are imaginable.As the bottle itself is made of soap, Breitenhuber came up with a simple solution to avoid unintentional dissolving. “It is possible to hang the Soapbottle with a ribbon in the shower. The strap makes it easier to handle the bottle, which becomes slippery in the water. Moreover, the free-hanging allows the Soapbottle to dry well after use.”

Besides hand soap, residues of the Soapbottle can be processed into detergents or cleaning agents by adding sodium carbonate. Moreover, Soapbottle is biodegradable and made from natural resources.

Full throttle for Soapbottle
While Soapbottle still remains in its conceptual phase and is not yet commercially produced or sold, Breitenhuber states she is in talks with potential manufacturers. Not only are various shapes, colors and sizes on the drawing table, but she also imagines different fragrances could take off for Soapbottle.

Soapbottle has brought home several awards celebrating its efforts in reducing packaging waste, such as the Green Product Award and Federal Prize for Eco-Design (Bundespreis Ecodesign). Since its creation, Soapbottle also hit the spotlight at a series of packaging events to inspire industry players, ranging from FachPack in Nurnberg, Germany, to the UDK exhibition “futures” at Salone Satellite in Milan, Italy.

Next month, Breitenhuber will be exhibiting Soapbottle at the Ambiente fair in Frankfurt, Germany, she concludes.

By Anni Schleicher

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