Retail-style dispensers offer big environmental savings

Published on Oct 20, 2020

Save money; save the planet.

Often the two don’t go hand-in-hand with an environmentally friendly choice too often the more expensive option.

Health Pak is changing that for New Zealand’s accommodation industry with retail-style dispensers for shampoos and hand/body wash that will save at least 60% on the cost of using small, one-off soaps and shampoos.  And those savings increase if the dispenser is refilled rather than discarded.

But even if it isn’t reused, a Health Pak retail style dispenser eliminates up to 80 single portion tubes and reduces the amount of plastic heading to landfills.

“If we take the 400ml Oliver & Sage bottle, then the empty used bottle has a net weight of 42 grams of plastic,” says Health Pak’s general manager of marketing and sales, Jimi Kennedy-Grant.

“We know that the bottle contained an average of 80 uses, and we know that an empty portion control tube or bottle weighs approximately 5 grams, so 80 X 5gms is 400gms of plastic.

“So using a 400ml retail style dispenser until finished and recycling it will save 358 gms of plastic being made, shipped halfway around the world and then very probably not recycled.”

Why is this so important?

Well, Plastics NZ, New Zealand’s industry association, says Kiwis each consume about 31kg of plastic packaging every single year, and only recycles 5.58kgs.

Plastic accounts for around 8% of New Zealand’s waste by weight, but because plastic is so light, it’s estimated it’s as much as 20% of our landfill space. Around 252,000 tons of plastic heads to our landfills every year.

And it does not biodegrade. Plastic left in landfill takes over 400 years to degrade, but it never fully degrades, it just disintegrates into smaller and smaller pieces.

Plastic also ends up in our oceans, with devastating effects. Scientists think about eight million metric tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean every year – that’s one garbage truck worth of plastic being tipped into the ocean every minute. Birds, fish, and mammals ingest this plastic, causing health issues, death, and even species-level extinction.

And projections show the amount we throw into landfill is increasing. The annual amount of waste in Auckland landfills will double in the next ten years, going from 1.5 million tonnes to three million tonnes. This means we’ll be throwing out more plastic than ever if we don’t do something.

Scientists predict that unless we change now, by 2050, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.  Health Pak’s retail-style dispensers have another important environmental gain. Most retail dispensers in hotels and motels are made in China so there is the production cost to the environment there, plus the need to ship the containers all the way to New Zealand.  Shipping isn’t green!

Health Pak’s dispensers are made in New Zealand so their carbon footprint is significantly lower, and they are recyclable - if you don’t want to simply refill and reuse them.

“Our New Zealand made retail dispensers offer the very best solution for moteliers who want to do the right thing, but want to keep their standards up,” Kennedy-Grant says.  “Our retail style dispensers have a high perceived value and get amazing guest feedback.”