Soapbottle Rethinks Packaging as Product

On average, Germans use 21 bottles of shower gel and shampoo a year. And only a fraction of those are ultimately recycled, Jonna Breitenhuber says. “Why is something used for a few weeks made from a material that takes 450 years to decompose?” she asks. As part of her master’s thesis at Berlin University of the Arts, the now graphic designer was determined to do her part to reduce single-use plastic packaging. The result is Soapbottle: a prototype shampoo-conditioner-body wash container, itself made of bar soap. Aside from the small reusable stainless-steel closure that covers the corner opening sliced out of the soap on first use, it has no plastic, glass, or metal. Since biodegradable, Soapbottle, which can come in a fresh palette of colors, dissolves over time. When the contents are finished, the bottle remnants can be used again as chunks of hand soap or grated to create laundry detergent. 

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