"Add Water" is the new "Add Oil"

With the growing awareness in sustainability and refill products amongst consumers, it seems little discussed that the everyday household products that we buy can contain upwards of 80% or even 90% water.

The impact of this on our carbon footprint is considerable, with all that extra size and weight for packaging, shipping and storage involved in hauling these products (with all their water) around the world. Ultimately, the discarded packaging, which is typically a plastic derived from oil, costs energy to recycle or sadly ends up in landfill, despite many good intentions to recycle them.

Fortunately, there is a solution at hand in the form of dehydrated and concentrated products. By the simple extraction or omission of water from certain products, we are left with concentrated formulas in liquid, solid or powder form. Whilst this is not a new concept, with laundry and dish washing liquid being the most popular concentrated products on our supermarket shelves, this process can also be applied to a variety of other homecare products. With only the essential and active ingredients condensed and shipped without the water, and by using refillable containers in the home, we can then add water from our own taps to activate the product and produce competitive results with existing supermarket plastic and water-heavy products on the market.

We can thus simultaneously save space, reduce our use of single-use plastics and minimise the environmental and financial expense of shipping vast quantities of water by simply adding water at home.

Island Life Hong Kong