At the core of Plaine Products is our mission to eliminate single-use plastics and to increase our bottle reuse. With that in mind, we are so excited to announce a new design for our bottles! This new look increases the lifespan of our bottles, resulting in even more reusability. The design evolution is happening in two ways that work together to ensure all of our bottles are reused as much as possible.
Why Focus on Bottle Reuse?
Plaine Products focuses on reuse for two reasons: to reduce plastic pollution and to avoid contributing to climate change. By reusing, we avoid pulling resources out of the earth to make new products. It also prevents the use of additional energy to recycle and reshape old bottles into new ones. Plastic is made from fossil fuels, so each time a plastic bottle is made, used, and sent to the landfill (where they’ll continue to wreak havoc on our environment for centuries to come!), additional greenhouse gasses are being released into the atmosphere. Our aluminum bottles, on the other hand, never need to end up in a landfill. Metals can be reused and recycled infinitely without quality loss. Despite this fact, recycling remains our last resort. For us, the more we reuse our bottles before we recycle them, the better.
New Bottle Printing to Increase Lifespan
We currently recycle approximately 20% of the bottles returned to us due to dents and chipping and/or scratching of the printed labels. Keeping in line with our mantra of progress over perfection, we wanted to do better. To reduce that number and to extend the life of our bottles in general, we worked with our manufacturer, Trivium, to source a printing option that’s similar to the printing on aluminum drink cans. Our new bottles are printed during the manufacturing process on the cylinder and then shaped, leading the print to be permanent.
Paint rubbing off our old bottles (photo by @emma_sustainiacs)
Our packaging is completely free of single-use plastic!
As a small company, we are testing the new printed bottles on our most popular products: the 16 oz. shampoo and conditioner in both Rosemary Mint Vanilla and Citrus Lavender. We cannot wait for our new bottles to arrive at your door!
New Labels to Enable Reuse of Older Bottles
We’re so thrilled about this huge step towards progress and hope to be able to transition our entire line of products to the permanent print bottle one day. In the meantime, we’ve found a solution to match the look of our new bottles while ensuring that none of our current bottles go to waste!
A sneak peek of our new and improved product line-up!
In 2017, we started Plaine Products with just 3 products. Five years later, we now offer more than 30 individual products! With our new printing option, we wanted to better reflect the variety of product and scent options we now carry. Instead of our basic label on metal, you’ll now find a soothing color palette expressed through our products. To match the look of the new, printed bottles we are adding labels to the rest of our products. These new labels will enable us to reuse the rest of the bottles we have, including the ones with chipped printing that would have previously been recycled. This also allows for our older shampoo and conditioner bottles to be repurposed for new products instead of being recycled. And a bonus—the labels should also help protect the aluminum from small dents and dings!
Label Process – Applying new labels to old Plaine Products bottles
To test the durability and longevity of our labels, we ran them through our industrial bottlewasher and found them to remain pristine even after 8+ washes. Once the bottles are finally ready to be recycled (hopefully after 10+ uses), we will be able to recycle the bottles through traditional recycling. We’ve ensured that our labels are recyclable through our membership with PACT Collective. The PACT Collective is a nonprofit that ends packaging waste in the beauty and wellness industry by finding solutions for hard-to-recycle materials; we work with them to recycle any broken pumps!
This is a HUGE win for reuse and we believe it’ll take Plaine Products to the next level. We couldn’t have done this without you and your support. Thank YOU for refilling with us.
