A Smelly Men soap carton next to a wooden plaque on a white background

We're now a Plastic Free Champion.

By James Allan, founder of Smelly Men.

The short version

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) has made us a Plastic Free Champion. The plaque and certificate arrived this week.

We set out to use as little plastic as possible from day one: cardboard cartons, cardboard push-up tubes, glass and paper void fill. It's how we've done it from the start, not something we got round to later.

What a Plastic Free Champion is

It's an award from SAS, the marine conservation charity. It sits inside their Plastic Free Communities movement, where businesses, schools and local groups work to cut avoidable single-use plastic. Businesses log the swaps they've made on a free online dashboard.

The scheme suits businesses cutting plastic step by step, which is most of them. We started plastic-free and as we grew the range, we aimed to use as little plastic as possible. For us it was a case of counting what we'd avoided. The best part is the community: businesses and shoppers all pulling the same way.

What that looks like

Here's what we sell, and the plastic version it replaces:

  • A soap bar in a cardboard carton, instead of shower gel in a plastic bottle.
  • A deodorant in a cardboard push-up tube, instead of a plastic roll-on or aerosol.
  • A shampoo bar in a cardboard box, instead of a plastic shampoo bottle.
  • Cardboard postal boxes with shredded paper inside, sealed with kraft tape, instead of plastic mailer bags.

When I added it up for SAS, the rough numbers since we launched were 1,600 soap bars, 1,750 deodorants and 200 shampoo bars. That's around 3,500 products that would otherwise have come in a plastic bottle, roll-on or aerosol. On top of that, around 1,400 parcels have gone out in cardboard boxes instead of plastic mailer bags.

How I counted: every product sold, kits split into their items, each one counted as one plastic item avoided. It's a like-for-like estimate, not a lab measurement. Roughly right, not exactly right.

Why it matters, even at our size

Some numbers, so you can see the scale:

  • The UK put around 2.2 million tonnes of plastic packaging on the market in 2021, about two-thirds of it consumer packaging (WRAP figures, quoted by the House of Commons Library).
  • Only about 9% of all the plastic ever made has been recycled (Geyer and colleagues, 2017).
  • The OECD expects global plastic waste to almost triple by 2060 if nothing changes.

There's good news too. WRAP and Valpak estimate that plastic packaging put on the UK market fell by about 9% between 2019 and 2022. Small, but the right direction.

Our 3,500 or so products are a rounding error next to those numbers, and I won't pretend otherwise. But rounding errors add up when enough people do them, and that's what the community is for.

Most of us say we care about plastic, and fewer change what's in the basket. WRAP's 2021 tracking survey found exactly that: concern high, action low or infrequent. So I like the win-win. When the plastic free option is the easy one, shoppers don't have to be saints, and businesses that offer it have something people want.

Join in

If you're not there yet, that's fine. Nobody gets there overnight, and SAS's scheme is built for exactly that. Pick one swap this month and stick with it. A bar of soap instead of a bottle of shower gel is the easiest.

If you run a business, SAS's Plastic Free Communities programme has a free online dashboard where you log the single-use plastic you've removed. Find your local community and the current requirements at plasticfree.org.uk.

Where we fit

Our soap, deodorant and shampoo bars come in cardboard cartons, tubes and boxes. If you want to start with the swap, try the Sports Day soap and Sports Day deodorant.

Shop the Sports Day Essentials Kit · Or try the Sports Day Duo first

Quick answers

What is a Plastic Free Champion?
An award from Surfers Against Sewage, part of its Plastic Free Communities movement, for businesses cutting avoidable single-use plastic.

What about the dropper bottles?
Our beard oil and shave serum come in glass with a bamboo lid. The lid has a thin plastic lining and the dropper has a small rubber bulb, so those two parts can't be recycled yet. Everything else we sell and ship is cardboard, paper or glass.

How did you work out how many plastic items you've avoided?
I counted products sold since launch, split kits into their items, and assumed each replaced one plastic item (a shower gel bottle, roll-on or aerosol, or shampoo bottle). It comes to about 3,500 products, plus around 1,400 parcels sent in cardboard instead of plastic mailer bags. It's a rough like-for-like estimate.

Can I recycle your packaging?
Soap cartons, deodorant tubes and shampoo boxes are plain cardboard with no foil lamination, so they go in your cardboard recycling (check your council's rules). Glass bottles go in glass recycling. The plastic-lined bamboo lid and rubber bulb go in general waste.

Do I have to give up plastic all at once?
No. SAS's scheme is built for step-by-step change. Pick one swap and stick to it.

Can my business become a Plastic Free Champion?
SAS runs it through Plastic Free Communities. Businesses log the single-use plastic they've removed on a free online dashboard. See plasticfree.org.uk for how to join and the current requirements.

Sources

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