The leading offender for single-use plastic waste in supermarkets is the cleaning aisle, said COO and Co-Founder of Restor, Renee Lee.
Founded with Grant Taylor, Restor was launched and designed to disrupt the laundry category through sustainable innovation.
“With months of research and testing, we discovered a new concept - concentrates. These products were becoming popular overseas and yet to make it down under at mass scale,” said Lee.
Restor’s ethos revolves around solving the issue of waste within the laundry category and making solutions accessible and easy for consumers to use. This led to the development and launch of Restor’s dissolvable laundry detergent sheets and refillable cleaning range.
“Both ranges not only reduce plastic but also have many benefits beyond sustainability, including being more affordable, stylish and time-saving.”
Two years later, Restor has saved more than 724,000 single-use bottles from landfills across Australia and New Zealand.
A key point for Restor was not just to focus on plastic recycling, as only nine percent of plastic globally has ever been recycled, but to reinvent product packaging, design and application to something entirely more sustainable, which could make a real impact.
Certain chemicals in cleaning formulas do pose a challenge, as some needed to remove germs effectively are harsh on waterways and are often carried in liquid forms. This is why they are packaged in plastic, which then goes through a broken recycling system or, more often, straight to landfills.
Read more from Renee Lee and Restor starting on page 38:
