Where do all the bottles go?

Where do all the bottles go? As we developed Last Squirt tube extenders, one of the first questions we had to figure out is exactly how many bottles of cosmetics are used every year. We started with just the United States since that is our home market. The results were staggering and, quite frankly, shocking. A Statista study based on U.S Census results and a Simmons National Consumer Survey found that 299 million people in the U.S use shampoo.

Determining how many bottles of shampoo each of these 299 million individuals use per year was a bit more tricky. Using data from brands like Paula's Choice along with analyzing our own usage we determined that 8 bottles per person annual was average. That is nearly 2.4 billion bottles used every year.

It is also difficult to determine the exact percentage of these bottles that are recycled each year because they are categorized together with water bottles. It is reasonable to conclude that less bottles containing excess shampoo would be recycled than water bottles so it is safe to use the average of 31% stated by the Association of Plastic Recyclers and American Chemistry Council in the 2015 National Post-Consumer Plastics Bottle Recycling Report.

That would mean over 1.6 billion bottles are ending up in landfills across the United States every year. Wow!

If Last Squirt tube extenders can extend the life by reaching the last 1/8 of product in shampoo bottles with tubes (approximately 20% of bottles) we can save every person one full bottle per year. Accounting for 31% recycling, that would save over 41,000,000 bottles of shampoo alone from landfills every year.

Imagine the amount of other cosmetics, cleaning products, and condiment bottles that we can save using reusable and recyclable Last Squirt tube extenders!