hydraSense Nasal Spray

As a person with chronic sinus allergies, one of the things that has been a genuine godsend to me is this saline sea water spray called hydraSense. Essentially, how the product works is that it is filled with this imported French seawater, you spray it up your nostril, and the gunk gets out of your nose and sinuses, reducing the need for medication. While the thereapeutic benefits are great, the packaging is not so great in terms of recylability. First of all, the bottle is made with a #2 plastic, High Density Polyethylene, which is great, however, the water inside the container is contained within a PET sleeve in a rubber jacket (scroll to the bottom of this page for more info.) which makes recycling extremely difficult. The bottle is contained in a cardboard box that has an extra nozzle as well as instructions on usage. To add to that, the carbon footprint of shipping French seawater to spray up your nostril is a bit excessive.

My assumed rationale behind this amount of packaging: I believe that this has been done for sterility, safety and easy stacking at the store.

Alternative considerations: Schering-Plough could get rid of the cardboard box and instructions, and instead, print the information on the actual bottle label. Secondly, instead of having two caps - both the spray nozzle and the cap for the bottle, they could just have a larger HDPE cap to keep everything sterile. Another consumer option comes from Oprah in one of her episodes on "nose bidets". An alternative that has long been used in India has been the neti-pot, which you can make your own saline water to put in your nose using tap water. It costs as much as 1 or 1.5 hydraSense units and significantly reduces complex waste such as the kind that comes from hydraSense's packaging. I have seen them on sale here or here, however I recommend that you shop around.

To let Schering-Plough that you are not happy about their packaging, please contact them at the following place:

Schering-Plough Canada Inc.
16750, route Transcanadienne
Kirkland QC H9H 4M7

514-426-7300
1 800-361-2353