The Truth About Refillables
More and more brands are launching refillable options within their line of products. From first glance it looks like all of these companies are making positive strides towards becoming more ecofriendly, but what's the truth about these refills?
Greenwashing is a common marketing tactic that companies use to appeal to eco-conscious consumers. Greenwash marketing is defined as when a company spends more money and efforts to make itself looks as environmentally friendly as possible instead of taking actionable steps to be more green for the planet. Common greenwashing trends include: listing products as all organic ingredients, packaged in all recyclable materials, or even just using natural colors within their graphics. The new trend within the greenwashing umbrella seems to be marketing products or entire lines as refillable. Yet, most aren’t truly sustainable in practice. FD Market specializes in refillable goods of all sorts including makeup, cleaning products, and body care.
Makeup
One industry that refillables have been taking over is cosmetics. Makeup products often come in small intricate plastic packaging, which seems to never be able to be correctly recycled creating a ton of waste. Several trending makeup companies including Fenty and Kim Kardashian's SKKN started carrying refill lines, yet seemed to have missed the mark when it comes to sustainability. Fenty offers a sunscreen with refillable cartridges, which is a plastic tube sliding into a larger hollow plastic branded shell. Other refillables listed on Sephora or Ulta come in plastic pods, similar to a Keurig coffee pod, that have a peel off plastic lid once and pops into the plastic outer shell. There seems to be a common theme here with plastic on plastic on plastic!
At FD Market we carry Elate Beauty products which are all packaged in bamboo outer shells or recyclable glass. Several of the products within the line have refillable options which have no plastic packaging and are purchased in paper sleeves that are easily biodegradable.
Home Cleaning Products
Several home cleaning brands are now carrying refillable products, yet majority are just purchased in a larger plastic bottle than the regular option. Also, some refills from Method can be bought without the plastic spray nozzle lid, but still come in the same plastic container. In theory this does cut down on a little plastic as you need to purchase less frequently with larger sizes, but it doesn't cut out waste like FD market does.
At FD Market, one of the key features of our stores are our many refillable products. You can bring any clean and dry bottle or container with a lid and fill it with a wide variety of products. If you don’t have a container to bring with you, you can purchase several different glass or locally made pottery options, or pick from our community donated box of bottles. Plus you only pay for what you really need, because all products are weighted out, so no need to pay for packaging again and again. If you are purchasing online, the refills do come in those standard plastic pouches which you may have seen by other big store brands, but they also include a free return to store label. We clean those pouches and reuse them for future orders creating a closed loop cycle with our refills.
Body Care
Besides the already mentioned refill greenwashing, brands including Dove started marketing body wash concentrates that come in smaller plastic containers. These 4oz concentrates need to be mixed with water and placed in a refillable bottle. Once completed the mixture of concentrate and waste allows for 16oz of product. Again in theory this seems like an eco-friendly option, but it still comes in plastic. Props to Dove for no longer making you pay for the water component which makes up 75% of their body wash, but we do it better.
At FD Market we don't make you pay for the water in your products by offering solid body products. Ranging from shampoos, body lotion, and face wash these bars are very concentrated and last longer than 16oz liquids. You also aren‘t paying for the plastic packaging as well. We have all kinds of resources on how to properly use these solid body products as well for your viewing.
It’s hard as a consumer to cipher through all of the products available everywhere to make sure product quality, ingredients, and company practices are actually making efforts towards sustainability and not just marketing them as such. Let us do all the hard work for you, and provide clean products of all sorts for you in stores and online.