Local Brand Allows for Sabon Refilling to become possible

Environmental activists are urging multinational corporations and top consumer goods brands to reduce the amount of plastic used in their product packaging by refilling. It has not yet occurred.

To accelerate the shift to a plastic-free future, a local company called SABON EXPRESS has joined the worldwide reuse and refill revolution. Mellany Zambrano, the company’s founder and chairman, thinks it’s time to change customer behaviors and behavior when it comes to purchasing household goods.

With its first-of-its-kind mechanized and automated “sabon” refilling stations, SABON EXPRESS, an innovative consumer goods brand and franchisable store chain, is paving the way for locally produced liquid soaps and detergents to have a strong foothold in the market. These stations enable consumers to have a refill of highly essential and consumable household products like dishwashing liquid, laundry detergent, fabric conditioner, liquid hand soap, and car shampoo while reusing their own bottle.

SABON EXPRESS dubbed as The Refill Authority, is trailblazing a more appropriate way of sabon refilling – one that does not require the ‘tindera” to use “tabo” or dipper to fetch products from the drum to manually refill bottles, which is a current practice of most local sabon refilling stores in the country. Said manual process potentially contaminates products and makes refilling messy and unhygienic. Sabon Express recently launched its liquid soap dispensing unit at the ZeroWaste Bazaar in Uptown Mall BGC Taguig last July 18-21 – as the first and only automated and hygienic sabon refilling station in the country.

The Zero Waste Bazaar is in celebration of Plastic-Free July, a collaborative event of Ecowaste Coalition of the Philippines, Greenpeace Philippines, Mother Earth Foundation, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Health Care Without Harm together with Break Free from Plastic, Oceana Philippines International, and Megaworld Lifestyle Malls. It showcased a photo exhibit and bazaar featuring art and eco-friendly stores to make plastic-free Pilipinas a reality.

SABON EXPRESS strongly advocates for “a world with less plastic” by promoting the reuse of plastic containers for household products via its conceptual and innovative hygienic ‘sabon’ refill dispensing unit in all its stores which comes in both manual and automated machines – a game changer in the local ‘sabon’ refilling industry.

Sabon Express is dedicated to continuous research and development and is receiving support from the Department of Science and Technology’s Industrial Technology Development Institute (DOST-ITDI) for further product development, technical advancement, and good manufacturing technology and processes with a vision to serve the country’s increasingly demanding market at scale. Because our company is advocacy-driven, Mellany Zambrano from Sabon Express adds, “We are continuously searching for ways to innovate so that we can serve our consumers better and to help save the environment in our own little way.”