Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is the sustainability mantra—while it’s easy enough to remember, it becomes more difficult in practice. Reduce is easy enough. Reuse is a nice sentiment, but the reality is that there are only so many succulents you can plant or so much olive oil you can decant in empty containers. And Recycle—well, it is far more complicated than disposing of packaging in the correct bin.
Gelo has put a new twist on reuse by gathering as many of its competitors’ single-use bottles as they could in an initiative to give them a new life. The Gelo Soap Bottle Salvage Kits consists of a salvaged hand-soap bottle, a pouch of Gelo refill pods, and a custom-sized label to Gelo-fy the bottle. If you already have a bottle, the brand has a download to print your own sticker.
Gelo claims 1 million bottles are purchased every minute and most end up in the ocean or in landfills. The purpose of the salvage kit was to encourage the idea that “a plastic bottle is something that has more than just a single life.” The Gelo Soap Bottle Salvage Kits created in collaboration with creative agency Mischief @ No Fixed Address reinforced this sentiment.
While the Salvage Kits were a limited run and may not be repeated, there is no reason why individuals can’t salvage used bottles themselves. Gelo makes it easy to reuse plastic hand-soap dispensers with its refill pods, which not only saves plastic, but also reduces energy and emissions from manufacturing new bottles, and from shipping water and plastic.
“Part of Gelo’s DNA as a brand is really about promoting reuse and refill as an alternative to buying new plastic,” Gelo CEO and founder Curan Mehra said to Fast Company. “There’s no reason to throw out stuff that’s good.”