Beyond excited to share something we've been working on for three years...
When Gyve and I set up SURI we wanted to do things differently. But honestly, it's not been an easy journey.
It was difficult to find a manufacturer to make toothbrush heads with plant-based materials.
It was difficult to persuade investors why we were going to spend more money to offer free recycling in pre-paid envelopes.
It was worrying to see whether shoppers would care about this as much as we did, and even more worrying to see whether anyone would actually return the heads.
A few short years later, and with well over a ton of heads returned, we can safely say that others felt the same way! We're proud to have saved those heads from ending up in landfills and oceans. But that was never going to be the end of the story.
After receiving an Innovate UK grant, we worked with the University of Exeter and others to work out how we could meaningfully use the materials we were collecting to reuse them.
Today, we're excited to share a partnership between SURI and the incredible ReBorn Homewares - together, we're converting 18 of our toothbrush heads to create our 1st new product - soap dishes!
This has been a difficult project made possible because of the relentless determination, the non-stop problem solving and the deep passion that our team has led by Cora Purdy and Sarah Yu in our Sustainability team and supported by Michael Peters, Ana Caeiro, Michelle Mannion and many others. It's truly rewarding to see an idea you've had brought to life by others in (better) ways you couldn't have imagined. Thank you all.
This is just version one of the new products we'll make. Keep an eye out for more drops throughout the year (and if you have any ideas, please let us know!).
Link with more details below.
