New Spray Head is Recyclable

Lightweight, fully recyclable, and, for the first time, with post-consumer recycled content in the mechanical components: the new spray head of Werner & Mertz’s Frosch brand of cleaning products is designed to be more sustainable than before.

The Mainz-based detergent and cleaning products manufacturer has joined forces with Berry Global to change the packaging for sprayable cleaning products: the bottles have already been made of 100 percent recycled plastic since 2014 and are fully recyclable; now, the cooperation partners are once again setting a recycling standard with this sustainable spray pump. “The goal of our joint project was to consistently and uncompromisingly implement all elements of a high-performance and, at the same time, recyclable spray and foam pump for cleaning agents,” says Immo Sander, head of packaging development at Werner & Mertz. The new spray head pays off on the three “cycle R’s,” he continues. Specifically, this means:

Reduce: the weight of the spray head is reduced to a minimum. It is the lightest spray pump of its kind, weighing 18 percent less than commercially available triggers on the German market.

Reuse: according to the manufacturer, the spray pump is more powerful than the predecessor model and manages at least 5,000 pumping strokes. This is equivalent to more than eleven refills of a Frosch original bottle at home.

Recycle: the spray head is fully recyclable because it consists of only one group of plastics, polyolefins; 97.6 percent are made of polypropylene, and only the valves, which make up 2.4 percent of the total weight, are made of polyethylene. Both polymers can be assigned to one polymer group and are mixable in recycling. In addition, for the first time, the spray head has a high recycled content in the functional, internal components of the pump mechanism (29 percent) – a technical innovation.