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Mayer Nissim
In both the food and cosmetic spaces, mono-doses require small yet powerful pieces of packaging that can protect these tiny portions from contamination, locking in freshness until they're ready to be used. As with most packaging, the solution has predominantly been found in plastic, from multi-layered, acid-proof condiment wrappers to dissolvable, PVOH coatings. These small plastic packs are littering our planet without any hope of recapture or reuse. In fact, as A Plastic Planet highlights with its Sack the Sachet campaign, 855 billion single-use sachets are produced every year, and all are sent to landfill.
Unsurprisingly, nature offers us alternative solutions, and disruptive brands and material innovators are finding new ways to encapsulate wide ranges of products and formulas without fossil fuels. From the jelly-like bubble of algae to solidified vitamins and botanicals, discover five single-dose solutions that are delivering on demand without the impact.
single-use sachets are made, and thrown away, every year
of beauty consumers think single-dose packaging seems wasteful
Multi-material coffee pods, made from plastic and aluminium, can take up to 500 years to decompose
While coffee pod machines might use less energy and water than other at-home coffee machines, the packaging waste they generate is enormous, with 80% of the pods discarded and sent to landfill. Many are made from either 100% plastic or a combination of aluminium and plastic, and even those made from 100% aluminium still can't be easily disposed of at home due to their size and need for cleaning.
Halo from the UK is changing the coffee game with its home compostable capsules made from Bagasse and Paper. Nespresso compatible, they maintain the convenience of pod coffee while negating its harmful environmental impact. Halo pods conform to standard EN13432 and can be put in both food waste bins and compost bins, where any leftover coffee acts as nutrients for the soil. Packaged in a paper-based box printed with vegetable ink, the pods' only downfall is the use of a biopolymer film wrap, which the brand is quickly designing out.
Finding an alternative to flexible single-use plastic that’s safe enough for food and drink is tricky, but Xampla's dissolvable and edible film made from plant proteins gives us hope. Inspired by the art of spiders' silk-spinning, the film is made from proteins such as pea, soy, potato, oilseed cake, and fava bean hull, and is designed as a like-for-like swap for plastic film and wrapper applications in use today.
Strong, flexible and 100% bio-based, Xampla can directly replace PVOH-based dissolvable films, house single doses of perfumes and vitamins, and be applied as a protective liner on paper packaging. It can even be used as an edible and cookable food wrapper, with recipe box giant Gousto partnering with the company to make the world’s first pea-based edible stock sachets.
Encapsulated beauty products have actually been around for a while - remember bath pearls that were dropped into warm water and dissolved on contact - and while the industry took a hiatus from this method of delivery, single-dose capsules are back in force. Original iterations of these pearls were made from gelatine, but US skincare brand Common Heir has created capsules from Algae for its vitamin C and retinol serums. Using this natural material means the capsules can be disposed of in both home and industrial composters, but also dissolved in boiling water and safely poured down the drain. No waste, no toxins.
An added benefit of capsule delivery is that the product isn't exposed to oxygen or light - two elements that rapidly degrade the quality of a beauty product - until the moment it's used, in turn extending its shelf life and reducing waste. Common Heir's capsules are packaged in a paperboard tube printed with soy-based ink for a truly recyclable, plastic-free product.
American D2C brand Opulus Beauty Labs proves that single-serve skincare doesn't have to mean single-use packaging with its pioneering Opule Treatments - plastic-free skincare pods. Inspired by Parisian chocolates, the packaging-free pods are made from an outer shell of vitamins, ceramides, and botanicals, which encase a soft core of suspended active ingredients. The outer shell mimics an ampoule - which are often made from plastic - and protects the core formula from oxidation and degradation, while doubling as an absorption enhancer.
To use the product, consumers place the treatment pods in the accompanying Opulus Activator device, which melts the pods into a liquid product within 100 seconds. The patent-pending thermal blending process activates and combines the two layers to facilitate absorption, resulting in fresh skincare. While an expensive investment for a consumer, the activator is designed as a 'forever cosmetic jar', and is compatible with all future product launches such as face masks and hair products.
Having recently won the Earthshot Prize, Notpla is well on its way to making its Seaweed membrane of the same name an industry staple. Made from brown seaweed powder, plant material, and a 'secret recipe' of additives, the Notpla material can be transformed into edible sachets for sauces, condiments and dressings, pipettes for oil, and even Notpla Pearls - single-dose spheres of seaweed membrane that can hold portions of toothpaste and so on.
The sachets and pipettes have a shelf life of two years and are certified OK Home Compostable, but can also be eaten if desired. The company's most recognisable encapsulation project saw its energy drink-filled Ooho capsules handed out at the 2019 London Marathon, but in the last three years the brand has taken great strides towards scalability, launching Notpla Films, Notpla Paper, and Notpla Rigid - taking the benefits of seaweed packaging to new heights.