If you’re looking to minimize your plastic footprint, but also don’t have the time to run to refill stores or spend hours making your own products, you’re not alone. There’s a reason Amazon has become the giant that it has – pure, unadulterated convenience. The only con to ordering those everyday staples through Amazon is the plethora of plastic that comes with each order, no matter how small.
Founded by John Mascari and Sarah Paiji, direct to consumer brand Blueland delivers non-toxic cleaners in the form of a small tablet that you drop into a container with a little water. You also get a beautiful, acrylic bottle that will serve as your forever cleaning vessel.
And why? Once you remove the water, you not only eliminate some of the virgin material the plastic industry is pumping out into the system, you cut down on CO2 emissions as well.
“My personal journey to use less single-use plastic began when I became a new mom, and it sparked the whole idea for Blueland,” says Paiji. “I was horrified when I learned that the water I was using to make baby formula contained hundreds of pieces of microplastics. It turns out all this plastic we are discarding is ending up in our waterways and oceans, and now showing back up in our drinking water and food, and the baby formula I was making my son.”
Paiji knew that she wanted to create a difference by lessening the amount of single-use plastic we contribute to the planet and return the oceans to their natural, pristine state. For her, that began with the cleaning products in our homes that are often packaged in plastic and thrown out right away.
“When we first came up with the idea for Blueland, I assumed the bottles would be in glass,” states Paiji. “However, always a believer in not designing in a vacuum and building for our customer, we ran customer surveys with thousands of households. Over 80% came back saying no to glass due to concerns of it shattering, being heavy and impractical.”
With their hearts set on creating a sustainable, reusable bottle that would be widely adopted, they returned to the drawing board and tested aluminum extensively. However, with their cleaning solution in tablet form, they were unsatisfied with the lack of transparency available as consumers would not know when it was finished dissolving. As such, with the help of Cradle 2 Cradle, a non-profit organization educating and empowering manufacturers of consumer products to become greener, they landed on acrylic and conceived the Forever Bottle. Not only is it capable of being reused until the end of time, but it won’t shatter if you drop it like glass or leach toxic chemicals like antimony as PET bottles potentially do.
When it came to the design, Blueland reached out to Stitch Design Co., who developed a stunning, minimalistic brand with black type and small pops of color while Arthur Kenzo handled the industrial design of the bottle. Together, they produced a vessel that celebrated the innovation and functionality of the cleaning solution in tablet form.
“We did this with a refractive ‘U’ at the bottom of the bottle, which highlights the drop, as the color at the base refracts up and mirrors the effect of a colored tablet dissolving in a clear solution,” chimes in Paiji.
As of now, Bluehand has three cleaning products available in their lightweight Forever Bottle that holds 20 ounces of cleaner—Multisurface Cleaner, Bathroom Cleaner and an unscented Glass & Mirror. If you’d prefer to get a little extra bang for your buck, Blueland offers a Cleanup Kit that includes all three cleaners for a sweet 20% discount. When you run out, no sweat as refill packs are available in packs of 3, 6, or 9 and packaged in a compostable paper for as little as $2.
Considering Blueland has been committed to eco-friendly practices all along, it’d be a shame if they stopped at shipping, which they don’t. Bottles are shipped in 100% recyclable cardboard, while the refills come in paper mailers. There is zero plastic to be found, which is a big step in the green direction.
At the end of the day, whether you’re shopping for your home or gifting to a friend, it’s beneficial to invest in companies and brands that care for the well-being of the planet, instead of relying on what’s readily available or convenient. Blueland, luckily, is yet another company compressing their cleaning products into a useful tablet that’s helping consumers turn off the plastic tap.
