Brazilian shampoo and conditioner brand Reload reuses plastic water bottles for its packaging

Since the end of 2018, Reload, a Brazilian hair care company, has been attracting market attention with a business model based on environmental concerns, particularly through its packaging. The company is the first in the world to reuse plastic mineral water bottles to distribute its high-performance hair care products.

This packaging reflects a real policy of reuse and recycling. They also play a key role in underlining the brand's main message: "What matters is what's inside." Instead, the brand focuses on the product, the benefits it brings, the problems it solves, and its impact on the consumer and the planet. Reload thus reduces packaging to its primary utility: transportation.

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The repositioning of the Reload brand

The brand "Reload Beleza Positiva" was launched in 2013 by Filipe Sabarà and two other members. And it was in December 2018 that Tedoro Brava, Reload's commercial director, joined the team to lead the new phase of the brand and offer a new option to consumers who care about their health and the environment.

Since then, the hair care formula has undergone a positive transformation to better align itself with the goal of caring for the planet.  

Thus, Reload started working with the mineral water company "Água Mineral São Lourenço" and collects discarded water bottles after use in bars, hotels and restaurants. After using a patented disinfection technique to thoroughly clean all collected bottles, Reload simply re-uses the bottles for its shampoo and conditioner.

In order to highlight its product offer and to claim its positioning Reload markets Reload hair products that are entirely natural and vegan (without sulphate, paraben, silicone and animal testing). The brand works with moringa oil, quinoa protein, argan oil, amino acid complex and provitamin B5.

Some figures on plastic pollution

Plastic is a single word for a multi-faceted reality, encompassing a wide variety of polymers and additives with different chemical and physical properties. As the use of plastics is ubiquitous, so is the pollution from plastics. Plastic is a global scourge. According to the United Nations:  

  • About 5,000 billion pieces of plastic end up in the ocean.
  • A plastic bottle takes "450 years to infinity" to decompose.
  • Packaging is the main market for plastics.
plastic pollution

To do this, Reload works with re-used bottles, which reduces the accumulation of waste and brings back life to items that would normally be discarded.

The benefits of bottle reuse

Every day, consumers throw away plastic water bottles. These bottles litter the highways, clog the oceans or end up in incinerators and landfills.

That is why the reuse of plastic bottles has many environmental benefits.

This means less need to make new bottles and less waste that ends up in landfills, roads and oceans.  

Reusing plastic bottles can significantly reduce pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption.

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The main differences between reuse and recycling

One of the pillars of sustainability is to increase the number of uses for every item we use every day. This reduces the amount of waste generated by society and the energy needed to manufacture new products. Recycling and reuse can be two different ways of doing this in practice.

Recycling plastic water bottles is certainly better for the environment than throwing them in the garbage, but it uses energy to turn the plastic into another usable product. In addition, the recycling process produces wastewater and air pollutants. This process is therefore a lesser evil, but is clearly not perfect.

On the other hand, reusing plastic bottles requires almost no additional energy expenditure andreduces pollution. In fact, whenreused, the bottle is neither transformed nor modified. It is simply washed and will be reused as it is for another purpose.

Awareness about our ecological footprint is becoming more and more visible in our daily life and in our consumption. So why should it be different in the workplace? Running a sustainable trade fair is not just a trend, it's a responsibility. All the more so as more and more players, such as Reload, are helping to simplify this approach and prevent it from being too costly.

If you don't know where to start, find out here how to take an eco-friendly approach in your salon or beauty salon.

Written by
Farah
Interested in beauty and hairstyling, I am Content Manager at Wavy. I am delighted to be able to share my discoveries in this sector with you today.

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