New way of recycling in a beauty shop

Challenge Background

One of the objectives of L’Oréal is to be the most ethical and sustainable global companies in the world. We seek to reduce the plastic waste going into landfills from our beauty products by offering a service in our shops for customers to return and recycle their empty plastic packaging.

What is the product challenge?

We need a machine capable of transforming the hard, strong PPE or thin flexible PET into small beads of material using only/mainly human energy. The main goal is to not use electrical energy that impacts the environment to recycle the material – but if this is the only safe way, we will accept electrical motors and use clean energy to power it. The floor space for the machine should be no more than an A4 footprint as our stores are small and should be human height say 1.5m. We want to create something in the store that is visually exciting to customers both in seeing a transformation of plastic containers into small beads, and also to see a blend of coloured beads in a clear collection container.

What is the usage challenge?

It has to have a zero chance of accidents and be extremely safe to the customer and staff from a health and safety point of view with zero chance of fingers or clothes being accidentally entrapped. It has to have a zero fault likelihood as the staff cannot be distracted into unblocking the machine. (Think photo copiers where paper gets stuck and it takes time and effort to clear.)

What is the biggest challenge?

The force required to crush a pack that varies in size from a 50ml to a 400ml container. The material can be very tough and thick and to do this without the machine continually getting pieces of plastic stuck and blocking it.