Did you know that water makes up over 80 percent of products like shower gel and shampoo? This doesn’t only lead to a lot of unnecessary transport, but it also creates a mountain of plastic. To tackle these problems at once, Ilse Kwaaitaal and Mirjam de Bruijn created Twenty: a concentrated shampoo capsule that you dissolve at home.
Four out of five trucks that transport care products drive around the same water that comes out of our taps. This isn’t just highly inefficient, but it also creates an enormous amount of CO2, particle pollutants and unnecessary plastic. “Many companies focus on recycling and smarter transport, whilst we can make a much bigger difference by improving the design process”, Ilse Kwaaitaal says. “How can we construct products in such a way that we’re able to prevent a lot of waste and pollution upfront?”
Shake before using
To make a positive sustainable impact, Ilse and Mirjam developed Twenty: a concentrated shampoo capsule that you can dissolve at home in a reusable bottle. “When the capsule makes contact with water, it explodes, just like a bath bomb”, Ilse explains. “Whilst shaking the bottle, the shampoo gets thicker and thicker until it has the exact same consistency as the shampoo that you normally use.”
Potential
By focussing on the liquid shampoo market, Twenty has the potential to make a real difference. “Of course shampoo bars also offer a solution to the problems we’re trying to tackle”, Ilse says. “But only 1 percent of the current shampoo market consists of these bars: the rest is all fluid. Only in the Netherlands, 15 million consumers use around 90 million bottles of shampoo per year. By offering these people an alternative, we can create some real ecological progress.”
Future
At the moment, Mirjam and Ilse are still developing the product, which they hope to launch later this year – in ‘Twenty Twenty’. “As soon as the shampoo capsule is up and running, we want to make the whole personal care and cleaning products market capsule-based”, Ilse explains. “If we’re all willing to add water to our products at home, together we can create 80 percent less emissions AND 80 percent less plastic. Sounds good, right?!”
Want to know when the shampoo capsules are in store? Follow Twenty on Instagram!
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