YOU HAVE QUESTIONS?
We have answers!
Bottles
Our refillable bottles are made from different types of resistant and recyclable plastics like PET or HDPE. In addition, we chose durable materials for the labels to make sure your bottle lasts for as long as possible. The combination bottle-label is 100% recyclable through the standard collecting process (blue bags in Belgium).
We have looked at all possible options (e.g. glass, inox) and plastic is the best option for multiple reasons :
Weight : Plastic is lighter than glass or metal which makes it much easier to transport. This can be key if you need to bring a lot of containers back.
Strength : Unlike glass, plastic is resistant to little shocks. With a plastic bottle, you run no risk of breaking your laundry bottle in the middle of your grocery bag.
User-friendly: No risk of stockout! Like glass, plastic can be transparent which makes it easy to assess in a blink of an eye whether you still have enough product or you need to refill.
Affordable: Plastic has a low production cost. This is the only material allowing us to offer our bottles at only 1,5EUR.
Eco-friendly : Plastic is perceived as a less eco-friendly material than glass or metal. This is only true if it used only once before being disposed. Once plastic is reused and recycled, it can be more eco-friendly than glass or metal as its production and recycling process require much lower temperatures.
We estimate that a refillable bottle can be refilled 25 times on average. However, if handled with care, 50 refills are realistic. To avoid leaks, it is key to replace the bottle once it is damaged. The damaged bottle can be 100% recycled through the standard collecting process for plastics (blue bags in Belgium).
For 2 reasons :
Legal: Following European law, detergents must be sold with a label detailing critical information like the security notice, how to dose the product etc. This information can be found on our bottles, so our partner stores do not face any risk of fine.
Hygiene: The dispensers are perfectly calibrated to our bottles. This allows a clean, smooth and automatic refill by just hitting the START button.
Products
The products have been developed in partnership with Atelier Jean Regniers for environmental (local production in Belgium) and social reasons. Indeed, Atelier Jean Regniers is an adapted company employing disabled people and helping them to develop themselves in our current society. Choosing for Superzero is also making the social choice!
We thought about it and even tried but making high quality eco-friendly products requires quite some expertise.
Therefore, we decided to partner up with a local expert on this matter. In addition, we believe that our real added value is in developing the right distribution system allowing a large-scale transition towards zero-waste consumption rather than reinventing the wheel on existing products.
Of course! Currently 2 of our products (hand dishwash and all-surface detergent) are certified with the European Ecolabel. We chose the EU Ecolabel as it guarantees both the eco-friendliness of the products as well as their efficiency. Indeed, in order obtain the EU Ecolabel we had our products tested against traditional (non-eco) products to demonstrate that we are at least as efficient as those products. The efficiency of the product plays a critical role in its eco-friendliness as less efficient products require higher doses which result in more packaging and transport. The laundry detergent is in the certification process and the softener will not be certified as there is no EU Ecolabel for such product class. However, like our other products, it is also made of more than 99% of natural products and biodegradable.
Just to make your life easier! Indeed, as some products have the same bottle format, working with a color code makes it easy for you to refill the right product in the right bottle. However, don’t worry as we use food coloring which is harmless nor on you or the environment. As an example, the blue coloring used in our laundry detergent is also used in the Smurf candies. (If that’s not Belgian enough ;))
Dispenser
We developed the dispenser ourselves with feedbacks from storekeepers and consumers to ensure the best user-friendliness for both the store staff and the consumers. In addition, we wanted a real 100% zero waste solution, which is often not the case with other systems.
We produce the dispensers ourselves in our workshop in the heart of Brussels.
