Built to last forever. Used for about a week
Plastic is a genuinely brilliant material for exactly the wrong job: things we throw away. Nowhere is that clearer than the cleaning aisle — rows of single-use bottles, mostly full of water, destined for the bin. Here's the problem, briefly, and then what we did about it.
Plastic was designed to last forever. Most of it is used once — then sticks around for centuries, in the sea, the soil, and increasingly, in us
Three uncomfortable facts
We're quietly eating it
Microplastics have turned up in human blood, lungs and even placentas — and in drinking water, seafood, salt and countless everyday foods. By some estimates, each of us swallows around a credit card's worth of plastic a week. Nobody ordered that.
The ocean is filling up
Researchers estimate the equivalent of a rubbish truck of plastic enters the ocean roughly every minute. On current trends, some project more plastic than fish, by weight, by 2050. Most of it never breaks down — it just breaks up, into smaller and smaller pieces.
It's a climate problem too
Plastic is fossil fuel in solid form. Drilling it, making it and burning it adds up — by some estimates, plastic production emits more than all the world's flights combined. And production is still climbing, year on year.
We've teamed up with CleanHub
Cutting plastic from our own products is a start — but we wanted to do more than just our bit. So we've partnered with CleanHub, an organisation that funds the collection of ocean-bound plastic in coastal communities before it ever reaches the sea.
Every kilo is tracked and independently verified, and the work creates fair, paid jobs where it's needed most. Less plastic in the ocean, and a little good beyond our own bottle.
Make the small switch
One bottle, kept. Everything after that is just a refill — and water you already have.