How much plastic do you use in a year? You might be able to research online to find the average amount, but it’s hard to know for sure. And unfortunately, it’s easy to not know here in the US. Because we send our trash down a chute or into a bin to be easily taken away and forgotten about.
But what if you were faced with all of the plastic you used on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? This is what Lindsey McCoy was faced with when she ran a nonprofit organization in the Bahamas. On that small island, there was used plastic everywhere: even on a beach they called Junk Beach.
Like most entrepreneurs and business owners, Lindsey saw a problem with all that plastic use and wanted to solve it. She co-founded a company called Plaine Products with her sister, which lets you purchase bathroom products in aluminum bottles that are then cleaned and reused for your next order.
Allow me to introduce Co-Founder, Lindsey McCoy…
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I’m Lindsey McCoy, CEO and Co-Founder of Plaine Products. We’re on a mission to eliminate single-use plastic from the bathroom by offering a line of toxin-free personal care products.
Plaine Products come in aluminum bottles that can be sent back and refilled time after time. All of the products are vegan, non-GMO, cruelty-free, biodegradable, color-safe, and free of parabens, sulfates, and toxins, good for the body and the planet.
My sister and I started Plaine Products together and are proud to be replacing disposability with reuse, placing value on the resources in packaging, and empowering consumers to reduce waste.
For 10 years I lived in the Bahamas running an environment education nonprofit organization. As I quickly learned on a small island, there’s no first-world infrastructure to insulate you from the piles of plastic you are creating.
You see plastic bags, bottles, and flip-flops on the beaches, in the water, spilling out of the landfills, along the side of the road. There’s even a place so full of plastic, it’s called Junk Beach. The message that plastic lasts forever, no matter how long we use it, is much more obvious living there than it is here in the US.
After seeing all of that plastic, I wanted to start using less in my life. I started taking action: carrying a reusable water bottle and grocery bags and skipping the straw at restaurants and bars. I looked for other ways to use less plastic. But I couldn’t figure out how to get those plastic bottles out of my shower. I’m not crafty enough to make my own shampoo safely, and shampoo bars didn’t work for me. I needed another option.
As we contemplated a move back to the States, I realized that I might be able to solve my own problem. Even better, I might be able to help other people use less plastic in their lives. I pulled in my sister, Alison Webster, who has a design degree and strong opinions about the quality of her products. Together we spent two years finding the right containers and products. We launched Plaine Products in February 2017.
When we were starting, we were the only company that paid for you to send your bottles back to be cleaned, refilled, and reused. It was tricky not only starting a business but starting one using a new model. We didn’t fit the normal boxes for most of the suppliers we working with, so everything took a lot of time and energy. We made lots of mistakes.
We continue to update our bottles to increase the number of times they can be reused. Once the bottles have gone through several cycles, we’ll send them off to be recycled. The nice thing about aluminum, as opposed to plastic, is that when it’s recycled, there’s no loss in quality. It just turns right back into more aluminum. When plastic is recycled, it is downgraded into a lower form of plastic until it becomes unusable and ends up in a landfill or the ocean.
We started as a direct-to-consumer e-commerce website. To help spread the word and generate traffic, we developed relationships with experienced bloggers in the zero waste, vegan, and green beauty fields. As we were working to solve a problem, we found a receptive audience that was excited about our mission.
For me, it’s important that we provide a product that empowers people to make a choice that’s good for them and the planet. I want people to feel good about the positive choices they make instead of feeling guilty about the times they weren’t able to find non-plastic, or natural, items.
As we continue to grow, we are working to engage people around those positive choices and help inspire others to take steps in that direction, however big or small they are.
We spent a lot of time figuring out how to make sure the product was as environmentally friendly and as high quality as the packaging. Happily, we finally found a manufacturer that was as committed as we are to natural products and ingredients.
For example, originally our products had wheat and silk proteins, which were of concern to vegans and those with gluten allergies. While the silk proteins were from a biological source, our manufacturer was able to tweak the formula to remove those ingredients so that we could move forward without any concern from either of those groups. Our success thus far is not only because of the innovative packaging, it has also been because people genuinely like the products.
Books: The Minimum Viable Product: A Primer by Eric Ries, Cradle to Cradle by William McDonough & Michael Braungart, Essentialism by Greg McKeown.
Podcasts: In the Sauce, A Bit of Optimism, People Over Plastic, Rethinking.
https://www.plaineproducts.com
https://www.instagram.com/plaineproducts/
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https://www.pinterest.com/plaineproducts/pins/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/plaineproducts/
https://www.youtube.com/plaineproducts
https://www.tiktok.com/@plaineproducts
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