CREATING CHANGE: WORLD FIRST BAMBOO RAZOR
In July 2012 typhoon ‘Vincente’ hit Hong Kong hard. The now infamous pellet spill saw us spending three months on Hong Kong beaches cleaning them up. Alongside us daily was a dear friend Stella Phillips. Stella and her husband Nigel have been close family friends for many years. Nigel Phillips has his own company, Global Strategic Alliance (GSA HK) that manufactures system razor blade handles and disposable razor blades for most of the high street names.
One morning towards the end of the pellet spill we had a meeting with Nigel to discuss possible alternatives to plastic for his razor handles. We got onto the subject of bamboo and the seed was planted. GSA HK started looking into possibilities and began R&D with their factories in China. Several years went by and behind the scenes the GSA HK team were still working hard on the bamboo razors concept. There were many versions; some of the earliest were almost comical which we dubbed “The Flintstones Razor”.
With the issue of single use plastic now firmly in the world’s media thanks to movies like ‘A Plastic Ocean’ and Sir David Attenborough’s ‘Blue Planet 2’ and SKY TV’s Ocean Rescue, the world is looking for innovative business leaders to get creative and help reduce our plastic addiction.
Last year GSA HK proudly showed us their System Razor Handle (not the disposable single use).
The Holy Grail however is the single use disposable razors, the kind that you find in hotel rooms or complimentary vanity kits. These proved harder to manufacture without any plastic holding the blades in place.
This week GSA HK called and showed me the worlds first completely plastic free, Bamboo Disposable Razor. They have meetings scheduled with many of the big companies and my prediction is that they will be snapped up. Europe for example will ban all single use plastic by 2021, substitutes need to be found and as we have seen here, substitutes take time to bring to market.
Thank you GSA HK for being so open and listening, changing the world one shave at a time. GSA HK have always supported our work against plastic pollution and with our newly established OceansAsia we look forward to future projects together.