WASHINGTON — ‘Tis the season for holiday gatherings!
You know how it goes. You’re dressed to the nines and you know you look great.
Donning the favorite outfit, you spritz perfume or cologne, and apply makeup, if you wear it.
And you see it during that final mirror check on the way out the door — that deodorant stain.
Well, two Princeton graduate students say they have an answer — it’s called Clickstick, and they say it’s a solution for wayward deodorant and a way to reduce wasted plastic.
Gilad Arwatz says he was bothered that lots of plastic is discarded each time someone uses and trashes a deodorant container. Then he had lightbulb moment.
“Clickstick is composed of a holder and a container. So basically as a user, you buy the holder once and you just replace the container. Because of that, it allows us to make the containers much lighter, meaning less plastic,” Arwatz says.
According to a FAQ sheet, backers can also reorder the eco-friendly containers or pick the “Green-Green” option, which comes with a refillable container and refill pouches. “You’ll just inject it into the container. It’s a very mess-free application, very simple and the people who choose to use that will save up to 90 percent of the plastic waste,” Arwatz tells WTOP.
Arwatz says he had the idea for many years, but never did anything with it.
Things didn’t get rolling until he approached fellow mechanical and aerospace engineering student Carla Bahri. (Yes, they are rocket scientists.) He already knew they worked well together, based their work on prior academic projects.
“One day, Gilad came to me and he said … ‘So I have this idea; do you want to jump in?’ Just like that … and then he came the second day with the very preliminary prototype, but it was a working prototype. From there we just started working really hard on it,” Carla says.
Arwatz and Bahri say their product will get the right amount of deodorant to the right spot — your armpits. They say Clickstick is equipped with a microprocessor that delivers the same amount of deodorant each time, and only when you press the dispense button.
The product will also come with an app which can help users determine how much deodorant they need based on personal needs and physical activity levels.
“One other advantage of the app, which is really nice, is the fact that you can order refills through the app, when you need them. Also you can set up automatic refills, so you never run out of deodorant,” Carla says. Users can also choose from various deodorant strengths and scents.
Arwatz and Bahri say they took the number of wasted plastic deodorant containers and figured the weight equivalent in plastic bags. “We reached a number that had so many zeros that it was ridiculous,” Arwatz says. So they tried expressing the number in jumbo jets, “and apparently the amount of plastic … that Americans are using wasting every year just from deodorant is equal to about 145 jumbo jets, which is crazy.”
“And it’s a much nicer device to use,” Bahri adds.
Clickstick’s Kickstarter campaign runs through Dec. 2.
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