The best brand names sum up the vision of a company and get across their ethos in one bite – a bit like a good film pitch. So when you hear of a brand called Single Use Ain’t Sexy you nod your head and say “you know what, they’re right”.
Single Use Ain’t Sexy (SUAS) was started by former lawyer and tech executive Josh Howard, to fight back against the rising tide of single use plastic waste.
Specialising in dissolvable hand-wash soap tabs, SUAS tabs dissolve in water and last as long as your average shop-bought soaps – minus the unnecessary waste.
All parts of SUAS products are recyclable, from the re-usable dispenser bottle to the recyclable packaging that the refills come in. Every single household that switches to SUAS saves 25 plastic bottles from entering landfill every year. And, when you consider its first run of products sold out soon after launch, that’s already hundreds and hundreds of plastic bottles saved from the scrapheap.
Single Use Ain't Sexy is on a mission to eradicate single-use plastic with its cutting edge range of ‘just add water’ personal care products.
How does it work, you may ask? SUAS sends you a reusable bottle (included in the starter pack and full home pack). You fill it with tap water, drop in a tablet and let it fully dissolve. Then, when you need to wash your hands, pump the effervescent foam from the bottle and wash away.
What’s even more remarkable is that SUAS’s manufacturing processes weren’t adversely affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, which allowed them to launch successfully in the peak of it. A new soap seller in lockdown? Sounds like right place, right time.
“We launched about two months ago – right in the thick of things. We didn’t have a choice, it was ‘let’s just do this’,” says founder Josh. “It was definitely a strange time to launch a business. People were obsessively washing their hands multiple times a day, so we kind of had to go with it.”
While you’d think launching a product during the biggest health crisis for a century would be the worst thing for any new brand, it hasn’t halted SUAS for one minute. The company is consciously paying it forward too, by donating 5% of all profits to Australian healthcare workers helping in the fight against Covid-19.
What we like about SUAS is its approach to its mission. It could’ve easily been too po-faced and facts-forward, but instead, it adopts a cheeky tone with its branding and advertising in a way that’s easy to relate to, easy to understand and – at the same time – quintessentially Australian.
The design is also to die for – very clean, stripped back, and simple. Like SUAS itself.
Postage in Australia is currently free; a starter pack, containing a re-usable bottle and two tabs, costs AUS$18, with each tab the equivalent of a full bottle of soap.
So like Single Use Ain’t Sexy says: don’t be a tosser, wash your hands without plastic waste.
