Zero Co AU Review 2024

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My name is Michelle, I’m a millennial and I’m the opposite of a domestic goddess. And Facebook can obviously tell, because they’ve been serving me up Zero Co ads. Their branding is pretty much catnip for millennials.

Obviously, I bought the whole set. I’ve now tried them all and I thought I’d review them because I think it’s a cool example of a well thought out environmentally friendly system. Most of the products are household products, but there are also some beauty products in there as well.

(Note: This isn’t sponsored – Zero Co offered to send me products after I reached out to ask a question, but I decided to buy them myself because I wanted to try everything out slowly without pressure.)

ZERO CO OVERVIEW

Zero Co is a household and personal care product company that focuses on reducing single use plastic.

I’m usually pretty skeptical when it comes to brands that focus on single use plastic. Part of this is because I’m used to reviewing skincare and makeup, and compared to other sources of single use plastic in our lives, skincare just doesn’t account for that much. It takes a while to finish up most products, but a lot of skincare brands make it seem like you’re saving the world if you buy their serum.

Another big reason is that plastic-free brands often make tradeoffs that aren’t necessarily well thought out, and it ends up being greenwashing.

For example, sometimes brands switch to really heavy glass that ends up having a huge carbon cost for transport. They also break a lot in transport which means you end up wasting a lot of product, as well as a container. Sometimes brands switch to bioplastics that might be compostable, but not truly biodegradable. They can’t be recycled and most people don’t compost them properly, so they might have been better off just using a traditional recyclable plastic. Some bioplastics also have a bigger carbon footprint than traditional plastics made using renewable energy.

The final reason is that most eco-friendly brands are also into the whole clean beauty, “scientists are trying to poison you” thing. I HATE this kind of marketing – I’ve talked about why before in my post Clean Beauty Is a Scam and Won’t Give Us Safer Products.

I don’t really boycott this because it’s so hard to find companies that have ZERO clean beauty fearmongering in their marketing. A lot of the time it’s because the brand themselves have been misled, and I try to be nice to people who promote the wrong thing out of good intentions. But I do get really annoyed and if there’s an alternative I’ll usually take it.

But Zero Co make household products, which is something we use a lot more quickly, giving us a lot more single use plastic. Australia is actually one of the worst countries in terms of single use plastic per person.

Zero Co also has a lot more dimension than just taking ocean waste and turning it into bottles. I asked my two favourite sources for environmental science questions, The Eco Well and Waste Free PhD what they thought, and they said it looks like a pretty good idea.

HOW ZERO CO WORKS

Zero Co is based on a closed loop refill system.

You buy their products which come in refillable pouches. There’s also optional “forever bottles” that come in pretty millennial-friendly pastel colours. I got the starter kit which has one of each thing.

You fill your dispensers with the pouches:

Once you collect 15 empty pouches, you send them back in the prepaid mailing bag – you need 15 to make the carbon cost of mailing worth it. Zero Co then clean and refill the pouches for the next person.

The dispensers are made from recycled ocean, beach and landfill bound waste – there’s a cute tracking code you can use to see where your bottle has come from (all my bottles come from Indonesia).

The pouches are also made from plastic that would’ve gone to landfill. They can be reused “over and over and over for a VERY long time” according to Zero Co. When they’ve worn down, they’re going to be made into something else (not yet disclosed).

As well as being reusable, the pouches are also lighter than proper bottles, so it reduces carbon emissions from transport.

Zero Co’s also recently introduced carbon negative deliveries, where they offset 2 kg for every 1 kg of CO₂ produced. Carbon offsetting is a bit of a mixed bag. A lot of the time it’s used almost as an excuse to not actually reduce emissions, but I don’t think that’s what they’re doing here – I think it’s just meant to be a nice bonus.

I’m sure it’s not a perfect system, since I doubt any eco-friendly products are going to beat not using products at all. But I prefer not to live in filth, and this system seems to be way better thought out and covers a LOT more bases than other companies I’ve seen.

Zero Co also ask for suggestions if you work in the environmental space for how they can improve.

OTHER SELLING POINTS

On top of being pretty damn thorough in terms of eco-friendliness, these were things that really sold me with Zero Co:

SUPER CONVENIENT AND CUSTOMER FRIENDLY

Zero Co have all the products I normally use and more. Getting everything from the one place is a lot more convenient and has a smaller impact than, say,  buying laundry detergent from one place and dishwashing tablets from another.

It is mail order only though, and the 15 pouch system might be an issue if you run out of one thing before the rest. They’re looking into getting products into stores though.

There are lots of clear instructions and FAQs on their super comprehensive website. There are videos on how to roll up empty pouches, and tips like removing the tamper ring on lids before refilling containers. As an overthinker, I really appreciate this level of detail!

Their customer service team is also really responsive to questions, through their website chat and social media.