The Need: The world is facing a global plastics crisis.
To date, more than 8.30 billion tons of plastic have been created, and most of this has been discarded. If current rates continue, 12 billion tons will be in landfill or our natural environment by 2050.
While no product can fix this problem on its own, the industry is on a journey to “chip” away at this problem, and this is one of the steps on our journey to reduce plastic use.
The Solution: NEW Dove Reusable Bottle and Concentrate Refills provide all the care of Dove, but now with 50% less plastic. After 4 refills of the recycled plastic bottle and 2 refills of the aluminum bottle the Dove Body Wash Reusable Bottle & Concentrate Refills can help users reduce their plastic use by 50% versus our standard bottle. It’s important to keep refilling, the more you refill your bottle, the more you reduce your plastic use over time.
Which of the Pact’s 4 Targets does your work help achieve?
TARGET 2: 100% of plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025
What makes it particularly smart or circular? The body wash kit includes an infinitely recyclable, reusable aluminum bottle and one Daily Moisture Body Wash Concentrate refill. These refills are 4x concentrated compared to standard Dove body wash, so when combined with water, consumers experience the same Dove care they know and love. Once consumers get through two concentrate refills, they’ll be using 50% less plastic with continued use compared to our standard body wash. The sleek aluminum bottle also makes reuse attractive, serving as a premium addition to the bathroom.
Additionally, from the first refill, 80% less water is shipped (per refill). After a year of refills, there are 21% less greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing.
Results, Benefits, and Outcomes to Date: 2022 was a pilot year, and in many ways a year to test & learn.
What are the learnings so far?
How are you communicating your success? We are communicating our success with consumers, retailers, and internally amongst our own employees to galvanize our corporate culture of sustainable living.
Time Frame: We’ve been working on refillable, reusable formats since 2013. And it was only 2019 that we managed to crack a breakthrough technology that gave us the framework we needed to develop a refill system that had sustainable benefits, was innovative, and hit a consumer need.
Quote: “This launch follows years of trials and pilots in getting the formulation, the bottle and especially the refill exactly right,” says Vibhav Sanzgiri, Vice President of R&D Skin Cleansing. “We’ve been able to take the lessons learned from brands across the business about how people want to buy and use refillable products at home, and combine these with a product formula that gives exactly the same superior care as our standard bottles of body wash. “This is a first for Dove, and just the beginning. We’re sharing all our research with other skin care and hair care brands across Unilever, and we have a research partnership in place with a university to explore what else we can do in concentrates. We’re at a moment in time where we hope refills can begin to make a big difference,” he adds.