From unnecessary layers of packaging to elaborate press mailers, the sweetness industry has a protracted approach to go in terms of plastic waste. Every 12 months greater than 120 billion units of packaging are produced by the worldwide cosmetics industry, and with product packaging making up an estimated 45 per cent of landfill waste, it’s clear something needs to alter. 

Attempting to make it super easy for us all to depart behind zero waste in our shower routine is Plus, a latest eco-friendly personal care brand which has created dissolvable packaging. Debuting yesterday, the brand comes from the brains behind Starface and launches with one hero product: a just-add-water, no-bottle body wash. Available in two scents, in addition to a non-scented option, the body wash is available in the shape of 16 single-serve shower sheets full of an aloe leaf and shea butter formula, and which transform into shower gel once water is added.

The thought for Plus stemmed, partly, from the experiences Julie Schott, who co-founded the brand alongside Brian Bordainick and Cathryn Woodruff, had with PR mailers during her time as a beauty editor. “Probably the most over-the-top pointless beauty mailing I ever got as an editor was a hip-height shampoo bottle from Head & Shoulders. After I complained about it, they took me off the press list and that was that,” she says within the launch announcement. “I used to complain so much about beauty waste, once I was also a part of the issue, without ever searching for impactful solutions.” 

With Plus, Schott and her team have set out to seek out tangible ways to cut back personal care waste. Entirely eliminating using bottles, the packaging sachets the sheets arrive in are created using wood pulp from responsibly managed FSC forests and dissolve in water to go safely down the drain together with the gel as you shower. The mailers are all compostable. 

Through the use of dehydrated paper sheets, the brand has also removed water from its products and uses 38 per cent less water in manufacturing in comparison with bottled body washes. This reduction alongside subtracting all single-use plastic means the brand created 80 per cent fewer carbon emissions in shipping and what it will possibly’t reduce yet, it offsets via verified Pachama forest improvement projects. So in the event you’re searching for a approach to put sustainable living into practice in your beauty routine, that is one great approach to do it.