I have always loved the feeling of truly making full use of something before buying a new item to replace it. And while I am far from living a “zero waste” lifestyle, I try to make small changes that are sustainable and will have impact over time.
I scrape the inside of the peanut butter jar with a small spatula to get every bit I can. I wear my favorite clothes until they develop holes–and sometimes, I even hang on to them for just a bit longer.
And once, a pair of dress shoes I had owned for perhaps a little too long lost large chunks of their soft sole on my way out of work at the end of a long day and pretty much disintegrated to nothing by the time I made it to my car!
Though the shoes were a little extreme, I know I am not alone in trying to waste less, especially now with the rising cost of so many goods and the increasing toll of mankind’s impact upon the Earth.
The lotion “problem”
I hate when I know there’s more product in my pump lotion but it’s stuck to the sides and the bottom.
I know I talk about slowing down and living more deliberately, but waiting around for my body lotion to leisurely inch its way out of the bottle is not what I have in mind.
Instead, I usually resorted to trying to swirl the pump all around the sides of the bottle and then dragging it across my skin.
It was annoying, and honestly it was not terribly comfortable either!
The condiment brands have figured it out
The companies who produce condiments seem to have figured out something that the beauty industry has yet to discover or at least to implement. You know those bottles that are made so the ketchup or whatever is inside comes out of the tapered bottom of the bottle instead of the top?
Those are the best!
No more fancy “tricks” to tap in just the right spot on the label to get the ketchup flowing or waiting for what seems like an eternity until it finally oozes slowly down the inside of the bottle and finally finds its way out of its previous home and onto my burger.
Because the bottom of the bottle is where it comes out, the ketchup is ready to flow as soon as I uncap the lid and put it over my plate.
Are beauty product bottle shapes intentional?
Would it really be that hard to implement the same sort of design for lotion? I know the beauty industry is probably even more conscientious when it comes to design than many other goods, but it seems like they would have someone who could figure out an aesthetically pleasing way for this to happen.
Part of me wonders if it is intentional. A little product left behind in each bottle means we go through more, and consequently, spend more money buying that next bottle just a little sooner than we would otherwise.
I suppose we do have lotions that come in a tube, but those tubes are generally only so big. I don’t know about other people’s homes, but in mine, in the wintertime we seem to need those more hefty pump lotions. And I can’t even imagine what some of those would look like in tube form!
A solution?
The Zero Waste Cap isn’t fancy, but it doesn’t have to be. It solves a problem in a simple way, and it has achieved its purpose of allowing me to waste less when it comes to both Earth’s resources and my money.
I would venture to say it has even saved my sanity a bit.
I was a little confused when I first saw this product listed on Amazon, thinking it actually came with two lids.
However, looking closer, I found that instead there was one base cap and two adaptors that allow the cap to fit even more bottles and make it more versatile overall.
As I prepared to write this review and looked to ensure the cap is still for sale, I noticed some of the other options now available.
One is a multipack of fairly generic looking lids that sell for less than the Zero Waste Cap. At first I thought I might need to revisit my assessment, but instead it made me realize an aspect of the lid’s design that I had not considered before.
The lid is fairly wide compared to the mouth of the bottle. This additional surface area is well-designed, however, because it allows the bottle to be a lot more balanced than a bottle precariously standing on its narrow cap.
While this may look a little funny, the engineer clearly was concerned about function over form. And that doesn’t bother me one bit.
The second option was some sort of tripod looking thing that you attach to your bottle. Perhaps it would work, but it’s even less aesthetic than this cap and more expensive as well!
Do I think they could probably sell this cap for a little less money? Probably. But I have gotten a lot of use out of this simple solution over the past four years and have no hesitation in recommending it to others.
If something as small as a bottle cap can make my life a little easier and my wallet a smidge heavier, sign me up!
See how it works
If you’d like to check out the Waste Free Cap in action, check out my YouTube short from a couple of years. (Note: It’s on my first channel, which was taken over by my very cute puppy! If you love dogs, maybe stay awhile and enjoy some laughs and puppy sweetness.)
Please Read: If you do decide to visit Amazon to purchase after reading this review or watching the video, please note this product link is an affiliate link and I may earn a small amount for qualifying purchases that use my link: The Zero Waste Cap.
