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Nivea's In-store Refillable Shower Gel Stations Are Not a Good Environmental Solution

Ignore the other design blogs and think about it for a minute

By Rain Noe - August 13, 2020

in Packaging

Shower gel is dumb and it's bad for the environment. It's yet another product that is primarily liquid, and the relatively heavy material is shipped around the world inside single-use plastic bottles. How many of those bottles get rinsed clean and recycled? And of those that do get recycled, how much energy does that consume?

Bar soap is a better way to go. It can be packaged in recyclable paper. It's also relatively lightweight as it's missing shower gel's key ingredient, water. Since most of us tend to shower in water, we can use that already-in-my-house water with bar soap to make the requisite lather. There's no need for shower gel nor the bottle.

Nevertheless, design blogs are agog because Beiersdorf, the parent company of personal care brand Nivea, is rolling out a new in-store refilling station for their shower gel in Germany.

The idea is that consumers bring in a spent Nivea shower gel bottle and stick it in a purpose-built machine, which refills the bottle with your gel of choice and provides a new barcode sticker that you ring up at the checkout. But you can only do this a few times:

"The plastic bottles can be refilled up to three times using the special barcode. After the third refill, the customer is then asked to hand in the old bottle at the checkout for hygiene reasons so that it can be recycled. In return, they will receive a new bottle and a first filling for free."

The reasoning here is that the bottle itself might get dirty, knocking around in people's disgusting bathrooms and whatnot, so it's capped at three refills to avoid spreading germs.

For a single-use plastic bottle to become a triple-use plastic bottle is better than the status quo; however, using bar soap is better than both. This is the point that everyone seems to be missing.

"Our current concept is ultimately a small link in a large chain," says Beiersdorf Packaging Specialist Marta Suslow. "And such a concept can only succeed if we find a balance between a sustainable business model and a real reduction in material, water and CO2 throughout the entire life cycle. But that's exactly what we're aiming for!"

If that's exactly what they're aiming for--"a real reduction in material, water and CO2"--then I think what they should be doing, is educating the consumer on how much less waste bar soap produces.

For a better approach to this problem, see:

How to Cut Your Laundry Cost in Half in an Eco-Friendly Way

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Cedar Rain

4 years ago

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Bar soap is not just body wash that's in a different from. They're formulated differently. Bar soap is more stripping of the moisture barrier from top to bottom, and if you have dry skin or eczema, they are not a simple substitute.

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Nathan D.

4 years ago

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Hyperbolic thesis is predicated upon the ableist assumption that everyone has two working hands and that this is still a design blog yet neither of these things are true. I've also seen where other people stick bars of soap and I'd rather not touch one that's ever been out of my sight.

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Jill Karol

4 years ago

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Body wash is much more popular in Europe since in many cases, instead of standing under streaming water the whole time, they wet down, turn off the water, lather up (easier with a liquid or gel than a bar of soap) then rinse off. At least that was my experience when I lived in Sweden and Germany. Hated body wash then, hate it now too.

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- Juan Cano
  
  Jill Karol
  
  4 years ago
  
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  Thanks for that clarification!
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- Bastian Lee
  
  Jill Karol
  
  4 years ago
  
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  I‘m German and I do indeed take showers this way, but I don‘t agree that bar soap is any less convenient than liquid gel. In fact, I switched to bar soap (for body and hair) years ago exactly because I find it much more convenient.
  I think that the true reason for the huge popularity of liquid gel among my fellow citizens is that it‘s a habit passed down by generations that is not questioned much since bar soap alternatives are not advertised much either. I guess that there‘s more money to be earned with liquid gel too than with bar soap of which small amounts go a long way.
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