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environment2020/10/08

Why We Should Swap Water for Powder With aer

by aer

A mere look at the statistics is a shame: Around 14 billion pounds of our trash is dumped into the ocean each year. Roughly 28,000 thousand tons of single-use plastic is disposed of into the waters that make our planet so shiny and blue. What this misstate results in is also obvious and known. Eventually, these disposable packaging pieces, which land in different parts of our environment, not only the waters, will break down into tiny pieces that potentially form part of our future food and water supply. A truly vicious cycle we have to stand up and fight against — now and united as one.

Moreover, a fact that has reached less awareness is that conventional home and personal care products are made of 80–95% water. An ingredient that most people - especially in the developed world - have readily available at home. These vast amounts of water that are being shipped across the continent each day, in and out, over and over again, cause significant inefficiencies.

First, water contained in each bottle and container takes up large amounts of space in containers, trucks and other carriers of transport.

Second, it forms by far the largest contributor to the total weight of home and personal care products, thereby causing substantial amounts of carbon emissions that could easily be avoided.

So why ship it then in the first place? Why not simply get rid of the water and have customers add it themselves in a second? That’s where aer comes into play. The brand’s powders perform just as well as conventional, pre-filled and environmentally harming home and body care. The founding team consisting of Fabienne Hierzer and Michael Bartenstein are convinced that the world and the society as a whole can do better; this is why the whole team is eager to tackle the deficiencies inherent in home and personal care, two industries which have been causing vast amounts of unnecessary waste and pollution primarily as the result of poor product and process design. Most importantly, the firm wants to do so without making compromises on product quality, design, affordability and especially convenience for our customers. After months and now years of experimenting, formulating, designing and testing our products, aer launched its first set of home and body care products, which are all shipped with the least packaging and the most convenience possible. Importantly, a system of refills has been put in place — that come for as little as €2 per piece — that literally causes zero waste for your ongoing supply for different parts of your daily routine.

After usage, the paper packaging becomes compost

The brand’s refills are shipped to you in the smallest possible paper packaging, all of it being 100% biodegradable and compostable. This means that even in the worst-case scenario in which the product packaging is disposed of improperly and one of the paper sachets lands in a place other than a bin, it will simply disappear and self-compost into dirt after some time.