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Designer Behind Comme des Garcons Packaging Pairs Skincare With Zero Waste Design

03.03.22 | By
Designer Behind Comme des Garcons Packaging Pairs Skincare With Zero Waste Design

The multi-billion dollar personal care industry has a growing problem: plastic. With the growing popularity of products formulated to keep our skin and hair looking their best, so too has the pervasive use of plastic packaging for shampoos, conditioners, and liquid soaps increased – packaging all inevitably bound for landfills, or worse yet, floating in our oceans.

While a few companies have signed on board with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s “New Plastics Economy” goals in hopes of “designing out plastic pollution” by redesigning packaging to be reusable, refillable, or compostable by 2025, the industry by large remains a huge source of plastic waste manufactured to be used then tossed to essentially last forever in a landfill somewhere (or worse, float out to sea to eventually become a microplastic).

The recently launched Uni Refill System is setting out to counter consumer plastic waste and ocean pollution with a contemporary aluminum top dispenser system designed to be used over and over again with 100% recycled aluminum bottle refills – a “closed-loop system for bodycare.”

Three orange body serum aluminum bottles, with one on left unopened with cap on, second with white aluminum dispensers floating above bottle without cap on, and bottle on the right shown with the completed refilled and dispenser pairing.

The white pump top used across the entire bodycare collection, slides over each of the color coded aluminum bottles and secures with a twist to dispense five formulations for hair or skin.

Line up all five soap and serum product bottles with first shampoo paired with white aluminum dispenser.

The Uni bodycare line includes Exfoliating Hand Wash, Skin Shield Body Wash, 24 Hour Body Serum, Hydrating Shampoo ,and Hydrating Conditioner with price points starting at $25.20 USD, and a Starter Kit with all five formulations is available at $179.

Uni’s closed-loop model invites customers to send their spent aluminum refills bottles back via pre-paid postage label to be washed and refilled again with unisex scented hand soap, haircare, and bodycare products, to eventually be sent via carbon neutral shipping to be used again anew. Products can be sent via subscription or purchased individually.

The fetching modern dispenser was devised by Uni’s creative director, Marc Atlan, the same designer responsible for a myriad of luxury brand packaging for the likes of Commes des Garçons, A.P.C. , Prada, and Tom Ford for YSL. The entire line is reef-safe and uses sustainably sourced marine actives and native Australian plants, with Uni contributing 1% of online sales to coral restoration projects via Coral Gardeners.

Uni Shower Kit with shampoo, conditioner, and bodywash refill bottles in varying hues of blue against white backdrop on shelf.

Uni’s goals seem to be to incentivize a closed-loop relationship with its customers via their modern design in the same conspicuous brand-as-identity relationship between customers and products that made refilling Aesop glass soap bottles a thing…but this time intentionally and openly so. One could say it’s green-washing, but in a good way.

For more information on Uni, visit weareuni.com.

Gregory Han is a Senior Editor at Design Milk. A Los Angeles native with a profound love and curiosity for design, hiking, tide pools, and road trips, a selection of his adventures and musings can be found at gregoryhan.com.