Refillable
Our new soft-plastics collection has gotten off to a flying start – since we launched two weeks ago we’ve delivered 2752 Soft Plastic Pick-Up bags.
And in good news for CERES Grocery customers, as of this week you can buy and drop off Soft Plastic Pick-Up bags at the CERES Grocery in Brunswick East (they’re also selling Fair Fizz soda cylinders).
Now as you know we love recycling, but refilling is next level – so this week we’d like to share the story of how Frankie Layton founded Brunswick’s refillable laundry soap company Dirt.
After she finished high school, Frankie Layton spent a gap year working below decks on luxury yachts criss-crossing the Atlantic Ocean between the South of France and the Caribbean.
Frankie tells how what happens at the two ends of a luxury yacht planted the seeds for Dirt.
At the front of the boat passengers with the vast ocean stretching out before them would marvel at the spectacle of dolphins riding the bow wave – completely unaware that at back the boat a deckhand was throwing bags of rubbish overboard; a dirty little secret drifting in their wake.
This, she was told, was how things were done. Frankie wanted to do things differently.
Back in Melbourne, post study, working an office job, Frankie had an epiphany in a supermarket laundry detergent aisle while shopping for a housemate with sensitive skin.
For her friend, she needed to know the detergent’s ingredients and for herself, she wanted an environmental choice – neither was on offer and it got Frankie thinking.
Laundry detergent may seem mundane but it’s a fiercely contested $100 billion market dominated by three global giants.
Procter and Gamble (Tide), Unilever (Omo) and Henkel (Persil), have been selling us basically the same detergent in different coloured boxes and bottles for the best part of 100 years.
One of the reasons Frankie didn’t see any ingredients listed on the major brands products was that detergent, isn’t actually as clean as you might think.
The workhorse of modern laundry detergents is derived from kerosene, a surfactant called Linear Alkylbenzene Sulfonate or LAS – its precursor, branched alkylbenzene sulfonates or BAS, was withdrawn from sale in the 1960s after creating persistent foambergs in lakes, rivers, and coastal areas as well as causing problems for sewage treatment plants.
Other minor surfactants, solvents, polymers and optical brighteners (which actually don’t clean but trick your eyes into thinking your clothes are clean) are also derived from petrochemicals, which for marketers in the business of selling soap really just muddies the water.
As for environmental friendliness, Frankie worked out that the huge bottles of liquid laundry detergent largely filled with added water gave an impression of value but were actually a massive waste of plastic.
With growing direct-to-consumer online options, Frankie decided to take the plunge and launch something better.
Starting out in a spare bedroom and her dad’s garage, Frankie and co-founder Josh sourced local plant-based ingredients, bought a $500 filling machine and worked for two years on product development.
They sold their first glass bottle of Dirt on their accidentally live, still under construction website and decided to leave it up.
Their concept was simple;
Customers would order a laundry detergent dispenser bottle designed to last a lifetime, ready-filled with their locally made four times concentrated, plant-based laundry detergent.
When the dispenser bottle was empty, you would fill it from a reusable refill pack (made from post-industrial waste) .
When your refill was empty – you bought a replacement and returned the empty pack for refilling.
Dirt were the first laundry detergent company in Australia with a refill-return programme, an idea that came from a customer asking if they could send their refill pack back.
Last year, Dirt sent out over 48,000 refill packs for a second (or third, fourth, or even seventh) life.
The company supplied over 35 million laundry loads which saved 54,287 kg of plastic laundry bottles being brought into the world.
We love what Dirt do and this week to support these champions of the circular economy we’re putting their products on special – you can find them here.
Soft plastics pick-up is fully go!
Fair Food’s soft plastic pick-up went live just two weeks ago and the response has been amazing (thanks for all the positive feedback).
We’re so excited to be collecting your soft plastics (not just the ones that come with your Fair Food order) and sending them to be recycled at APR’s new mixed plastics pyrolysis plant.
If you don’t know already here’s how it works;
- Purchase a Soft Plastic Pick-Up bag from Fair Food here.
- Rinse and dry your soft plastics, put them in the Pick-Up bag.
- When your bag is full, tie it up and leave it for your driver to collect with your next Fair Food delivery.
CERES Grocery customers can also buy and return bags to our shop at Brunswick East.
Bags cost $2 each or you can buy a pack of 20 bags for $20, which we reckon should just about get you through a year!
Once we collect your soft plastics we send them to APR in Dandenong South where they are transformed into 100% recyclable builders film.
See the pic below for what can be recycled. There’s more info on the service here.
