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Waste Free Products Turn to Packaging To Cut Consumer Waste

As brands shift their focus to more sustainable packaging, people like Tangie by Waste Free Products are figuring out how to eliminate packaging waste entirely.

Laundry Paste Min

The average American uses and throws away 110 pounds of single-use plastic every year, with only 8% of plastics getting properly recycled. As more brands shift their focus to more sustainable packaging, some companies like Tangie by Waste Free Products are figuring out how to eliminate packaging waste entirely. Angie Ringler, the founder of Tangie, started making chemical-free cleaning products in her central Florida garage to help alleviate her own set of skin sensitivities. But once her non-toxic, natural laundry detergent turned into a high in-demand product for people across the country, Ringler encountered a huge packaging waste problem.Angie Ringler, Founder, Tangie LLC, Waste Free ProductsAngie Ringler, Founder, Tangie LLC, Waste Free Products

Since 2012, she has focused on delivering her natural laundry soap with innovative packaging and formulation with the motto of zero waste, zero water, zero single-use options, and zero plastic packaging.


Watch video   Watch this video report on innovative, sustainable packaging found at PACK EXPO Las Vegas

 

Packaging World: As a small brand, how did you arrive at being able to offer a sustainable package?

Angie Ringler: When I wanted to start selling my laundry soap, I used traditional packaging, which was plastic bottles with sprayers. I knew that shipping these gallons of liquid laundry soap seemed so wasteful to me and it just felt wrong. So, my business model was to sell the soap wherever I could drive it, which wasn’t sustainable, but I did it for a while. I started wondering where all the bottles were going, and whether I was still a part of the solution if I was pushing all this wasteful packaging out into the world. My first solution was to put on the label, "Return this bottle for $2 off of your next purchase." This way, I could get the bottles back. I maybe only got two dozen bottles back, but it might as well have been none. I wondered how I could make natural liquid laundry soap without being a bottle pusher. I reformulated my liquid products into three and half-ounce laundry concentrate blocks that dissolve in water to make a gallon of liquid laundry soap. Now, it didn’t need a bottle. I am really trying to stick to only two types of packaging, which are paperboard and aluminum, because those are the items that recyclers are incentivized to make sure that they get recycled.

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