From our first days in 1996, we have chosen to focus on using recycled plastic to create our products. We choose recycled plastic in order to reduce dependence on virgin plastic, and to encourage recycling. Choosing recycled helps to lower the amount of plastic in landfills and on beaches and also saves water, energy and electricity. With our choice of materials, we support the recycling industry in the U.S., a $117 billion dollar industry which creates more than 750,000 jobs.
Plastics with a purpose
With all of our products, we use a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to assess their impact. An LCA, looks at the journey of a product, and its impacts from the point of extraction of that products’ components from the earth, all the way through to the ultimate disposal of the product.
- Preserve’s plastic products are made from 100% recycled plastics.* Their minimalist packaging uses high percentages of recycled materials. This saves energy and preserves natural resources.
- All Preserve plastic products are recyclable—either through mailing back to Preserve or via curbside programs in communities that recycle #5 plastic. This creates an incentive for customers and communities to recycle.
- All Preserve products are made in the USA**. This enables shipping efficiency throughout our supply chain, which uses less fuel and reduces the environmental footprint.
- All Preserve products are developed and manufactured without testing on animals. Period.
We choose to use #5 plastic (polypropylene) as our source material since it is a versatile and benign plastic. Preserve obtains our recycled plastics from a network of trusted sourcing partners and we test each new source that we reprocess. The recycled plastic in our Preserve products represents pre-consumer recycled material or a mixture of pre- and post-consumer blends.
We identify the origins and intended use of all our plastics and work with our material suppliers to ensure that we know the first application of each material source. We follow FDA guidelines for use of post-consumer plastics in our products and all our sources of recycled plastic are tested for foreign elements, such as heavy metals, to ensure that there are no harmful chemicals migrating from the plastics that we use.
- Polypropylene, #5 plastic, does not contain BPA in its base monomer, and we do not use any plastic additives that contain BPA. The BPA free nature of our plastic has been confirmed through lab tests.
- Our products have also been tested for dishwasher and microwave durability.
*Our one exception is the Preserve2Go container which is made from 50% recycled plastic.
**Preserve’s razor blades are made in the USA and the cartridges are assembled in Mexico. The internal attachment mechanism for the Preserve Shave 5 razor (accounting for less than 10% of the razor by weight) is made in China.