Sustainable design of a trigger sprayer suitable to e-commerce market. A case study of design for material reduction, disassembling and recycling.

Worldwide consumption of plastics related to the production of household detergent containers was over 17 million tons in 2018, with an average annual growth over the last decade of 4.8%. Moreover, the pandemic will increase the demand for household detergents in 2020, 90% of which are packaged in plastic bottles. These are often associated with a liquid dispensing system called “trigger sprayers”. Due to its greater functional and formal complexity and due to the high number of heterogeneous materials used for the different components, the trigger sprayer often represents a critical issue in the disassembly and recycling phase of the bottle. The proposed paper aims to describe the research, development and prototyping process of trigger sprayer concepts, applicable to bottles of home care products sold through online purchasing channels, able to meet the requirements for the certification of "product suitable for e-commerce sale". The project, developed in collaboration with Aptar France, had as its further objective the optimization and enhancement of the environmental performance of the new product, through a life-cycle design approach and through the use of specific DfS strategies and tools. The new concepts developed are characterized by innovative technical-formal solutions able to increase the resilience of the product during transport, drastically reducing both the use of materials and the number of components, improving their performance. In the first phase of the project, a series of activities were launched aimed at identifying and analyzing the main environmental criticalities of traditional trigger sprayer models for domestic use. Through the photographic survey, the disassembly and weighing of the components and the identification of the materials used, it was possible to analyze the types consolidated on the market, the material and aesthetic-perceptive characteristics of the products, the ergonomic requirements and the technical and functional characteristics of the dispensing systems. At the end of the analysis phase, some new trigger sprayer concepts were generated, developed according to the DfS's design criteria and optimized to be used in bottles sold through e-commerce platforms. In the third and final phase the concepts have been prototyped to experimentally validate the strategies adopted and verify, with a special consumer test, the appreciation by the end user. The life-cycle design of the trigger sprayer with the adoption of design strategies aimed at environmental sustainability have led to a substantial reduction of the plastic material use and to the optimization of the disposal and recycling phase. The results obtained from the project have contributed to increase the company know-how, in terms of DfS of the Aptar group, aiming to focus on the SDG 12 "Ensure sustainable production and consumption patterns" (12.2-12.5-12.6).