Getting your beaches clean of plastic for your summer

The best packaging is the one that does not exist.

P&G’s Head&Shoulders brand just launched the probably next best thing: a shampoo bottle made of recycled plastic bottles collected after washing up on beaches in France.

This is the consumer giant’s much applauded attempt to tackle the problem of too much plastic in everything we use, from food packaging to cosmetics, and how much of it gets thrown away. Recognized as a technological breakthrough by packaging & recycling experts (apparently plastic collected from beaches doesn’t recycle that well), it is also a significant stake in the ground challenging the industry to follow the example. The Head&Shoulders team partnered with the recycling business TerraCycle and the waste management firm Suez in what is perhaps the biggest deployment of beach plastic ever.

And, for sure, this Head&Shoulders initiative is also an acknowledgment of consumers, in particular Millennials, being more demanding with brands expecting them to commit to social and environmental responsibility in return for passionate loyalty.