Smol has teamed up with Pulpex to launch a laundry detergent bottle made from pulp fibre.
Set for an autumn launch, the bottles are manufactured by Pulpex using the company’s proprietary process whereby wet forestry pulp is injected into a porous mould and then dried to produce a single piece bottle. The fibres used in this process come from FSC- and PEFC-certified forests.
To facilitate the containment of liquid detergent, the inside of the bottle has what the company describes as an “ultra-thin, water-based, food-safe” polymer dispersion barrier coating. Pulpex says that the coating is so thin that it can be recycled in standard paper and card waste streams.
The cap of the bottle is made from polypropylene (PP), with a dosing cap made from 100% rPP.
Smol’s previous packaging innovations have included plastic-free cardboard laundry packs in 2020 and aluminium refill bottles at the end of last year.
“Keeping our clothes clean comes at a cost to the planet. Our laundry habits in the UK create a vast amount of plastic waste; 58 million containers annually from laundry liquid alone! That’s around half a million wheelie bins each year, filled with plastic that’s used once but can hang around for decades”, says Smol’s co-founder, Nick Green.
Scott Winston, Pulpex’s MD, adds: “Bringing Pulpex fibre bottle technology into the laundry category driven by a forward-thinking partner like Smol represents an important milestone for our commercially scalable fibre packaging platform.
“This launch demonstrates that renewable fibre packaging can meet the performance, scalability and commercial requirements of mainstream consumer products. By helping reduce reliance on conventional plastic packaging while also lowering carbon emissions, we believe Pulpex bottles play an important role in the future packaging mix of this category.”
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