Reducing plastic by 80 percent: Cleanyst launches at-home reusable products system

08 May 2019 --- Personal care and cleaning products company Cleanyst has launched an innovative at-home system that allows consumers to easily create plant-based products using concentrated ingredients and water from their own taps. The launch is part of the company’s bid to minimize carbon emissions and plastic waste and is available today for pre-sale via their Kickstarter platform. By shipping only the necessary packaging materials and leveraging reusable bottles, Cleanyst estimates it can reduce single-use plastic waste in this category by 80 percent and save consumers an average of US$150 a year. 

According to the company, water makes up two-thirds or more of the weight of most home and body care products, driving up not only packaging and shipment costs, but also plastic and carbon footprints. The company also aims to make plant-based cleaning and personal care products more sustainable, accessible and affordable for consumers.

“We’ve been working in the home and body care industries for decades and we’ve learned a lot about the water content in most products, as well as the best ways to manufacture and package the most sustainable and efficacious products on the market,” says Nick Gunia, CEO and co-Founder of Cleanyst. “Consumers can save money, avoid exposure to toxic chemicals and be conscious of the environment by mixing their own products at home. 

Consumers have had the option to mix surface cleaners from concentrates at home in past, but Cleanyst’s provides concentrates for a much wider range of products and its patented Micro-Batch technology ensures a safe, effective and homogeneous mixture at the push of a button.

“Unlike existing systems on the market for mixing surface cleaners from concentrates in reusable bottles, our Micro-Batch technology is suitable for mixing virtually all home and body care products, including high viscosity products like shampoo, conditioner and body wash that cannot be simply diluted,” Gunia tells PackagingInsights.

“Our system replicates the type of mixing that you might typically find in a lab or production facility and this helps to ensure a perfectly mixed product every time,” he adds.

Mixing it up: Creating products at home
The launch includes a countertop appliance, reusable bottles for mixing and dispensing (supporters can choose from a range of quantities) and lightweight pouches containing concentrates made from naturally derived ingredients. The Cleanyst system allows consumers to easily create safe and effective products that are free of dyes, synthetic fragrances and parabens, in addition to reducing their environmental impact.

Creating the home and body care products with the Cleanyst system only takes a few minutes. First, users load a reusable bottle and ingredients pouch into the appliance. Next, they select the applicable mix program for the pouch and the appliance does the rest, adding water at the required temperature, dispensing concentrate directly into the bottle and mixing at the required speed. Within two to three minutes a 12 or 16 fl. oz. “micro-batch” of a plant-based finished product is ready to use. The user simply twists on a dispensing accessory, such as a pump or sprayer, on the neck of the mixing bottle, which will be reused when the product runs out and it is time to create another batch.

Cleanyst is set to initially offer concentrates for creating four types of body care products (shampoo, conditioner, body wash and hand soap) and six types of home care products (dish soap, laundry detergent, fabric softener, all-purpose cleaner, glass cleaner, and tub and tile cleaner). 

The company previously launched a range of household cleaning products suitable for use with the Cleanyst system.

Hurdles in development
There were two notable R&D challenges, according to Gunia. The first was to ensure the maximum utility of the Cleanyst system. “We had to design a system that could work with a very wide range of concentrate viscosities, both in terms of dispensing the concentrates and mixing them in the bottle.” 

This required constant prototyping and testing of the packaging components, namely the pouches and reusable bottles.  

Second, “it was extremely challenging to design plant-based concentrates that would yield high-quality products that mirrored the look, feel and performance of store-bought products,” Gunia explains. “This was an iterative process involving years of trial and error.”

Reusable models’ market potential
Gunia says the underlying consumer packaged goods (CPG) market is extremely large and the opportunities for reuse are abundant within the personal care market. There is a unique opportunity in the home and body care product categories because of the high water content in most products. “Not only can reuse models be applied, but we can also locally produce these products with water from our own taps, which magnifies the environmental benefits,” he notes.

The anti-plastic sentiment is certainly driving demand for reuse models, but there is growing environmental awareness among consumers that goes beyond the plastic waste problem and touches other challenges like climate change, Gunia says.  

“Based on initial feedback from our social media audience, we believe that consumers are willing to invest in new models, especially if they see the opportunity for payback in the form of savings over time. The consumers we have engaged with intuitively grasp the waste and inefficiency of the current approach to delivering home and body care products and we believe they are ready to make changes that will benefit both the environment and their wallets,” he explains.

As far as plastic packaging waste is concerned, Gunia believes that most CPG categories have a sustainability problem. “Although we are encouraged to see positive incremental changes relating to packaging, such as manufacturing single-use containers with post-consumer recycled plastics, we believe consumers are ready for more innovative initiatives that minimize the need for and volume of single-use packaging in the CPG marketplace,” he concludes.

Reusability, if done right, is contrary to the most pervasive symptoms of the waste crisis – single-use and disposability, and innovation in this space is flourishing. 

By Kristiana Lalou, with additional reporting by Laxmi Haigh