While searching various blogs, I stumbled on to "New Soap, Old Bottle".
What is "New Soap, Old Bottle"?
It is a new cleaning products that sells brand name liquid soap packaged in old plastic soda bottles, plastic water bottles and glass beer bottles.
NSOB say that, "Big companies aren’t going to do this on their own. So, we’ll do it for them. We buy name brand liquid soap by the barrel and package it in old bottles here in America."
I think this is a brilliant idea, but somehow I find myself asking, well it saves the bottles but what about the energy it takes to product this (production & transport over and over again)? I think it would be nice if consumers could take this on themselves rather than buying this product.
If you saw New Soap selling next to regular bottles of soap in your local supermarket, Target or Walmart would you buy it?
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7 comments:
I agree with your question about energy. There is so much more to consider than packaging alone. Reused, recycled, local, biodegradable—not one of these things by itself is 100% effective or even good. I think the term green was created for this reason; it connotes an environmentally effective system that we can't really define right now; maybe green entails different combinations of these things for different situations, but certainly not just one of them.
Net impact is what's important. For me, the most convincing green product is one that can show me evidence of it's environmental effectiveness in it's creation/production, transport, use, and final disposal/rebirth. NSOB only tells me that no virgin plastic was used in it's packaging; for me, that isn't too remarkable.
i just realized that "green" can be used in a subtly propagandistic way, as a glittering generality. it is a very vague and yet positive term that all kinds of companies are leveraging, often to my disappointment when i investigate a product further. it can mean all kinds of things to different people, from having recycled content to non-toxic materials to zero-emissions.
as grant said, only using all recycled materials is kind of disappointing for something billed as "green". we should be demanding more thoughtful, systematic approaches to "greenness", and maybe start being more specific with our language. or, more correctly, "they"(corporations) should start being more specific with how they promote their products.
dang, i just looked at their site. somebody needs to redesign their stuff. maybe some of you should alert them to this fact. ouch.
I saw a commercial the other day about Ziploc Food Storage Bags Evolve. Not only did it talk about how their bags were made with 25% less plastic, but they also talked about how this product was made with wind energy. Is this the kind of extent of "greenness" that would convince and display their use of the word.
It's interesting this change of tactic to talk about how these products are made as opposed to what the product can do for you. Using the commercial for these attributes as the selling factor. I guess part of it could be because food storage bags are pretty self-explanatory and have been around for a while, so they can talk about other things.
Is any other corporation talking about how their products are made and not really talking about the product itself?
This company cracks me up, in an oh my gosh, what are you doing, kind of way. They are packaging products that are toxic for the environment and human beings in reused bottles. It seems like a really big oxymoron to me. It is a very similar situation to the product Kelly brought to our attention. They are using wind energy to make something that is made to be disposable. NSOB reuses plastic bottles that I believe should not be reused? Correct? What is happening when the plastic is breaking down within the chemical solution that is being used to clean your home with? I don't know if anything bad is happening. Maybe nothing is happening. I am just throwing the idea out. I think that it is a mediocre idea that was not thought through all the way.
I feel that this is a good idea and a great question in concern to conserving energy. But no matter what way you look at it there will be a fault in the line regardless. By that I mean - using plastics vs wasting energy. There needs to be an implement towards a solution that can eliminate both since the companies are "to lazy to do it" or have less effective ways and its not energy efficient to keep searching for them then maybe recycling the old bottles period as biodegradable maybe and re purposing them for this idea - i don't know if that is possible I'm not a scientist but it is a thought.
It seems to me like this may be just a clever gimmick capitalizing on the green movement. At my house we already buy soap in bulk and reuse the old smaller container. It seems like people could do this on their own and not have to purchase these items through this company. They could also just recycle these bottles wouldn't that be the same thing.
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