Those of you who have seen the Story of Stuff, or who know me, know that I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff: where it comes from, where it goes, why it is designed the way it is and stuff like that.
Occasionally, I see some product that just freaks me out. That happened last week. I can’t stop thinking about this thing.
It is a new men’s shave gel, which I read about in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/business/media/04adco.html). The product is called NXT, which is pronounced “next” and is made by Clio Designs. The shower gel itself is comprised of clear gel balls in a plastic bottle. But the gel is irrelevant. The whole article was about the bottle. NXT is packaged in a triangular shaped bottle with a light blue hue. The thing that freaked me out about this is that every single bottle has an LED light and 2 to 3 triple AAA batteries in it.
Two or three batteries in the PACKAGE, not even for the product ???? Batteries have such toxic components that many cities ban their disposal in the regular garbage and require them to be dropped at a household hazardous waste facility. We’re supposed to be designing toxics out of our production systems!
The product designer’s idea is that the bottle will let off a light blue light which will draw us to the shelves to buy it. News articles about the bottles say they “will glow on the shelves, inviting customers to pick them up. Every 15 seconds, a light-emitting diode in the bottom of the container flares on, stays lighted for a few seconds, then fades out.” What are we, moths?
I found pictures and more details on the product’s website, (whatsnxt.net) which explains that “…our products contain a mini-computer with LED lighting in the base. One bottle alone is cool but the whole line together is an experience.” An experience?? No it’s not. It is a bunch of bottles, and stupidly designed ones at that.
I called the company’s customer service line to ask them about the bottle. The woman I spoke to, who had to keep putting me on hold after every question, explained that the batteries will be handled safely because each bottle comes with a note requesting consumers to dispose of the batteries according to local laws. She didn’t know the specific plastic resin which each parts of the bottle was made from, but she did know that the top and base are different plastics so the customers will have to cut them apart in order to recycle the tube part, which she thought was recyclable.
So I called Californians Against Waste (http://www.cawrecycles.org/) to ask them. They couldn’t confirm how recyclable it is, since the NXT rep couldn’t tell me what plastic resin each piece was. But Brian Early at CAW did explain that “anytime you have an unusual shaped bottle, you decrease the chance it will be recycled.” You see, there are humans working the recycling lines and it is their job to pull out contaminants that get mixed it with the specific plastic type they are recovering. If something looks different, its chances of being diverted to the dump are higher.
One of the keys to mainstreaming environmental sustainability is by making it easy for people to do the right thing, rather than requiring an extra effort to chose the environmentally preferable option. If we create products and systems and infrastructure to favor the environmentally preferable choice, we don’t have to urge each person, one by one, to make the right choice. A package that has toxic-containing batteries which need to be taken to a household hazardous waste disposal site and which has to be sawed apart before maybe recycling part of it is not an example of making it easier for people to do the ecologically preferable option. In this case, I’d say the ecologically responsible option is to refuse to buy it – both the hype and the product.
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