Unilever, the multinational behind cleaning brands such as Persil, CIF and Domestos, has announced plans to invest €100,000 in a new concept for a plastic-free laundry tablet. Every year billions of single-use laundry liquid sachets are sold around the world to low-income families who can only afford to pay for one wash at a time. But the packaging is tricky to recycle and often ends up as litter. Earlier this week designers – including Unilever employees – gathered at the firm’s ‘Rethink Plastic’ Hackathon and developed the idea for a laundry tablet to replace the plastic sachets. The plastic-free solution, which won the hackathon, uses a cheap, plant-derived coating instead of plastic to protect the tablet’s cleaning agent against humidity. Unilever was so impressed with the concept that it yesterday announced plans to invest €100,000 in the tablet’s development and support market trials.

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