If we care so much about being natural, why does Cloud 9 Naturally use plastic?

Packaging cosmetics does not have easy answers. There is not a single, good solution to choose from. Instead, there are a whole lot of green washing (making something sound safe and environmentally friendly while hiding the truth).

So, what are our choices? Plastic (boo, hissss), paper (only works for some products), aluminum (not bad, I heard it can be recycled), glass (yay!) At least that is what we have been greenwashed into believing.

PLASTIC:

Yup, it’s bad. The only good things about it is that it is cheap, light weight for shipping, and comes in any shape, size and colour you want. Everything else about it is bad. But those three things are significant. I can ship a box of 350 jars to my door for about a quarter or more of the cost of glass. And when shipping our my product to customers, it costs a whole lot less. In some cases, up to half the cost.

Glass needs to be wrapped in protective paper or plastic bubble wrap to protect it during shipping adding to the environmental impact. Plastic does not. Another pro for plastic.

I can easily get 1 litre plastic bottles all over North America. Glass, not so much. The selection of glass is getting harder to find, not easier as you would think it would be due to the phasing out of bad plastic.

The weight for 100 plastic bottles? approx 10 kg. The weight of 100 glass bottles: 44 kg. Now times that by 10 because we usually buy 1000 at a time.

It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that the cost to ship 1000 bottles to my door for just 1 size bottle is significantly more than plastic. Now, to ship a filled, glass bottle to my customers, wrapped in bubble wrap is costly, takes more gas (to get it to me and then my customer), and a whole lot of plastic wrap for something that big as well as the worry that it is going to reach my customer in one piece.

Do we have to use bubble wrap? No, there are paper products (which means cutting down trees just to wrap glass) out there but they are not as effective at protecting glass from breakage and scratching while shipping. We have used peanuts and you can buy biodegradable ones but they are more costly and end up in the landfill. All in all there is a whole lot of wastage to ship glass compared to plastic making it not as environmentally friendly as we are lead to believe.

Pros:

Cons: