PETpla.net Insider 09 / 2018

BOTTLE MAKING 18 PET planet Insider Vol. 19 No. 09/18 www.petpla.net New formula and a new rPET container for Ecover detergent A cleaner solution by Ruari McCallion When it changed the formula of its Ecover washing up liquid, People Against Dirty approached R&D Leverage to help it develop a new package that would clearly get across the message that improved cleaning performance is not incompatible with environmental responsibility. People Against Dirty, which was set up to create products that are sustainable and ecofriendly, is better known by the two brands it makes and markets: Method and Ecover. Method was founded in 2001, in California, USA. European company Ecover has a longer history, having launched the World’s first phosphate-free detergent in Belgium in 1979. The two compa- nies merged in 2012. “People Against Dirty was set up to create products that are sustainable and eco-friendly,” said Ryan McSorley, the company’s EU Industrial Design Manager. What sets it apart in the household cleaning market is biode- gradability. Its product formulas are all bio-based, and biodegradable. When Ecover began, in 1979, “green” clean- ing wasn’t a major segment. Times have changed since then, environmen- tal responsibility is very high on the agenda and it is now the leading green home care cleaner in Europe. It looks different from the established dish- washer detergent; while the best-known conventional brands tend to be green, Ecover is not. The company chooses to avoid using dyes in its products. While Green credentials are laud- able, eco-friendly cleaning products also had the reputation of not being as effective as conventional, phosphate and chemical-laden competitors. That has changed. “We improved the formula a lot, in order to give a better experience to the consumer, to make it more efficacious,” McSorley said. “However, we recog- nised that a lot of people didn’t realise it had changed. So we thought: let’s use design as a way to reposition and allow the consumer to reconsider and reas- sess the brand.” Ecover detergent had previously been packaged in HDPE, blended with some plant-based plastic. As one of its main USPs (unique selling proposi- tions) is purity and clearness, the deci- sion was taken to design with PET in mind. “We did some work understanding that solution, the HDPE with plant- based plastic, or shifting to a 100% PCR (post consumer recyclate) PET bottle. The PCR PET bottle was the ecologically better option,” McSorley said. That may come as a surprise to some people, especially with the poor press that plastic bottles are getting at the moment. “It was a question of looking at the material properties of both. HDPE doesn’t degrade as quickly when you recycle. When we started adding plant-based plastic to HDPE we found that we struggled to achieve the technical specifications with 100% recycled HDPE, whereas we could with 100% recycled PET (rPET). The bottle we launched with R&D Leverage earlier in 2018 is made of 100% rPET.” Of course, it wasn’t as straightfor- ward as simply switching from HDPE to rPET. Among the challenges was clarity; all rPET currently contains some impurities and it is extremely rare to get bottles made of it that are completely, crystal clear. “Part of the decision process for us was accepting those variations of colour, which can occur depending on the time of year and the source of the recycled material,” he said. Ecover turned this characteristic into an advan- tage. “We took the greyness and made it a feature in the design language of the bottle. The ribs almost accentuate the greyness but they make it look inter- esting, rather than a mistake.” People Against Dirty then approached R&D Leverage for help with the final design and for supply of production tooling. It already had some pre-CAD files, acrylic models and some 3D printed models. bottle making