Dove liquid soap used to come in a bottle with a flat cap, so you could sit it upside down in the shower, flip the lid and get the last of the soap out even when it was nearly empty. Then they changed the bottle shape so that the cap comes to a rounded point. It’s difficult to sit it upside-down unless you prop it carefully in the corner of the shower.
I assume this is to encourage us to sit the bottle on its base, which makes it almost impossible to get to the last centimetre or so of soap at the bottom. It’s ‘empty’ so you throw it out and buy another.
Now they make a larger bottle with a pump at the top. You press down on the lid to squeeze a measured amount of soap into your other hand. So far, so good. The other day the soap stopped coming out. The bottle was ‘empty’. I picked it up and there was obviously some weight at the bottom. What they’ve done is to make the plastic straw too short so it doesn’t quite reach the bottom. Once again, the last 5-10 mm is out of reach unless you unscrew the lid and shake the bottle violently or wait under the shower until gravity does its work.
This is deliberate design to promote wastage–the opposite of good industrial design. Shame on you, Dove.
Its not only Dove that does this almost everything in a plastic bottle is the same! My solution is to use a ‘Stanley’ knife to cut open the bottle. Then you can use every last drop. Fiddly but you can get at least another week’s worth from it.
Or one could just use bar soap. Bypass this game by purchasing a brand that has more respect for customers and environment or make your own and refill from your supply.
I find this a common problem with a lot of manufacturers. I imagine it is for fiscal reasons they have short tubes, the small amount from each bottle contributing to an overall saving. Tight-fisted, I say. Stop forcing consumers to buy more frequently, contributing more quickly to the already high load of plastic having to be recycled.
It isn’t only Dove, many products do the same thing, planned obsolesence is an art form! I usually remove the top of the bottle/container and water down the concentrate or squeeze the air out of the body and put the rounded point/spout/whatever into water to suck the water up. This dilutes the contents a little and adds height to the contents. Perhaps you should unscrew the pump and tip out the last bit. If it is this much work I just won’t buy Dove products!.
I have a similar problem with hair gel; having very thin, fine hair, was delighted to find Taft Mega Styling Gel gave me a great hairdo. I can see the transparent bottle has plenty of gel left inside but because it is a quite hard plastic and the gel is firm and sticks to the inside, when I get near the end, just won’t squeeze out. When my husband cut off the end of the container, I got enough out for about ten more uses.
Not only this issue but also one of the whole concept of ‘liquid hand disinfectant soaps’. Recently the U.S. FDA decided to delve into the issue and they have now directed all companies in the US to cease using the term ‘disinfectant’ with liquid soaps as they found that although their claim to 99.9% of gems was correct, it was not because of the disinfectant but the action of using soap while washing hands. Just another way for manufacturers to sell a product we don’t actually need if we did it right in the first place. Liquid soap is fine, just don’t add disinfectant and make unsubstantiated claims that it works better than the original when it obviously doesn’t.
