Hey Upfront, Why Are Your Bars In Boxes?

We love the way our product boxes look. They’re colourful, clean and easy to read, and each box is packed with useful info. Part of our promise of being upfront means you can check every ingredient in our bars to be sure it's right for you, and our boxes put that info at your fingertips!

You may wonder though, why do we use boxes at all? You may have seen other brands market their bars as packaging free. It almost seems like a no-brainer, since a large part of our branding is that our bars reduce packaging waste by eliminating the plastic bottle. Why not go one step further and sell the bars naked, so to speak?

The answer is quite simple, though it has a couple of components. We’re proudly a Canadian company, and in Canada there are laws and regulations pertaining to the packaging and labeling of products. The two Acts associated with cosmetics are called the Food and Drugs Act and the Cosmetic Regulations and the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act and the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Regulations. Obviously those one one heck of a mouthful, so for the purpose of this I’m going to shorten it to the Food and Drugs Act, or FDA. The FDA has a list of info that is required to be listed on cosmetic products, including:

• The name of the product in both French and English 
• The net weight of the product without its packaging
• The name and location of the manufacturer
• Any avoidable hazards and cautions associated with the product
• And of course, the complete ingredients list

Regulatory reasons aside, there are a couple more reasons we think a box is the best way to go. It’s no secret that our bars smell delightful. So imagine then, that you happen upon a display of Upfront bars on a store shelf, every one of them naked and unwrapped. You pick up a bar to give it a smell. But wait, how many other people have picked this bar up before you did? Five? Fifteen? If any one of those folks had a cold, they might have left germs on the bar. What if somebody picked it up to have a look, dropped it on the floor, and put it back on the shelf hoping that nobody noticed?

These are all hypotheticals of course, but the point is that without any packaging at all, you have no guarantee how many people have had their hands on your products before you buy them. Obviously wrapping our bars in plastic would break our plastic-free promise, but Health Canada guidelines requires some sort of label or packaging to provide consumers with important information about the product. We've found the perfect way to strike a balance is with our colourful, informative, not to mention recyclable, product boxes!