Most products with a pump function – think your hand wash, body lotion, shampoo and conditioner – contain up to five different materials, which makes recycling virtually impossible.
“The bottom line: if you want to make something more sustainable, the first thing that you must do is you must use less material,” says design consultant Joseph Alpert, who has worked alongside the IIAA on this project.
The first thing that makes the IIAA’s design different from other sustainable beauty systems on the market today is its refill. “You have a dispenser that you keep for life and then a refill,” he adds. “And the refill is where all of the innovation is.” Joseph explains that rather than being a rigid container, the refill acts like a soft bag “made from a material called ‘paper foam’, which is made from waste potato starch and paper in Holland.”
The second is that you can separate the components – and then recycle the inner lining and compost the outer packaging at home. “So it’s not like the coffee cups that you get, where they’re still going to behave like plastic unless they end up in one of the industrial composting facilities,” Joseph notes. “90% of the weight of this product is now home compostable, and then the rest of it you send for recycling. And that saving in plastic weight is a big environmental impact.”
As for the pump, it’s airless and squeezes the product upwards, eliminating the need for metal springs. The design also lends itself to 3D printing, which is more cost-effective than current single-use plastic packaging, especially for beauty start-ups. It also promises to appeal to luxury beauty brands as the design can be made more bespoke.
But the best bit? This innovation is free for the beauty industry to use – after all, there’s no point having a disruptive innovation if it’s kept under wraps, especially when the planet is at stake.
