Ryan McSorley has big ambitions. With his business partner and a small team, the Coleraine businessman wants to play his part in radically changing thinking on single use plastic.
he industrial designer looked at just how much waste is generated in the home cleaning market.
He and business partner Josie Harfield wanted to shake up the market, Ryan says. They created Neat, a company founded in the summer of 2019.
The company produces anti-bacterial concentrated home cleaning products for use in refillable containers. They are in available in various fragrances, as well as fragrance-free.
Their pitch to retail, including Tesco, which now stocks the brand, and online is that a typical bottle of household cleaner is 90% water and less than 10% "actual valuable ingredients".
"But we have access to water in our homes," says Ryan, who studied at Central Saint Martins in London and at the Dublin Institute of Technology.
That is a lot of water being shipped around the world, wasted. The refills are made from biodegradable, plant-based ingredients that remove the water and are packaged in recycled materials that can be re-used. Users just add tap water to the concentrated liquid.
“Taking action on plastic waste needs to be a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’.” the company says.
Globally, the home care industry generates more than 29 billion plastic containers each year. Experts estimate by 2050 there could be more plastic in the sea than fish.
According to the company, less than 10% of household plastic packaging gets recycled in the UK. Research found that nearly half of all consumers worldwide expect manufacturers to take the lead.
Ryan, who worked for Starbucks in Shanghai for some years before moving to London and now Coleraine, says: “We have to think and behave differently to make a change.
“Whilst recycled plastics are a move in the right direction, they won’t solve the problem. We need solutions that are a radical step change in reducing single use plastic.
“At Neat., our beautiful design-led solutions use aluminium and glass as primary material and avoid shipping water half way round the world.
“A circular system gives us incredible design opportunities. No longer are we designing products to be put in the bin, we are creating them to be with us for years to come.
“Therefore, they have to be better than what exists. We have a long term relationship with them so we have to love and care for them. No longer can sustainability be a compromise.”
As well as Tesco, its products are also stocked at Lakeland and Selfridges in Britain.
Ryan is back in Coleraine, taking some advantage of the changing work environment allowed by the Covid pandemic.
Business partner Josie Harfield added: "Neat. has sustainability at its core, our brand is a solution to a problem that can step change the cleaning category. We are just getting started, our goals are: neat homes, neat planet, neat business. This is a really exciting time for us."