520 million empty shampoo bottles are thrown away every year in the UK - enough to fill 207,000 Olympic sized swimming pools. And that staggering number doesn’t even include conditioner, body wash, or other bathing products - just shampoo bottles alone.
These bottles are often recyclable, but with 95% of cosmetic packaging being sent to landfill it's clear that even if bottles can be recycled, they aren't being. Whether that's because the recycling has been contaminated, it's been put in the wrong bin or has just been thrown away to begin with.
(Note, recycling plastic isn't perfect anyway - plastic degrades as it is processed so a plastic shampoo bottle won't ever become another plastic shampoo bottle again!) And because plastic isn't compatible with our ecosystems, these bottles can't biodegrade; they break down into microplastics that end up in our waterways, polluting our oceans and harming wildlife.
There’s a better way. By switching to an aluminium bottle or a shampoo bar, you’re stopping plastic from entering our environment at the source - without demand, there will be no plastic. Thanks for joining us in making a very real difference to our oceans.
