Shellworks' Vivomer dropper: a compostable pipette — Pentawards 2025 Sustainable Platinum

Pipette droppers for serums and oils are tiny fused assemblies of glass, rubber and plastic that slip through recycling machinery, so nearly all end up in landfill or incineration — millions of units a year. London-based Shellworks set out to redesign the component from the material up.

One material replaces the fused glass-rubber-plastic dropper: Vivomer, from fermented plant waste, performs like glass and plastic yet fully biodegrades in home compost.

Two years of development: a flexible Vivomer grade took 30–50 iterations, and the bulb was tested to more than 600 compressions to mimic a 30ml dropper's lifetime. The dropper pairs with a Vivomer round-shoulder bottle with a ceramic-like finish, can be screenprinted, and is mouldable with natural dyes and pigments.

Won the Pentawards 2025 Platinum in Sustainable Design; launched with brands Katoa Botanicals and Sam McKnight at 2.4 million units of annual capacity, with claims of replacing over 90 tonnes of conventional plastic.

Pipette droppers are everywhere in beauty — serums, oils, wellness formulas — yet almost none get recycled. Their tiny size and fused mix of glass, rubber and plastic let them slip through sorting machinery, so the industry's estimates run to millions of units a year ending in landfill or incineration. London-based materials company Shellworks decided the answer was not a better bin but a different material.

Its solution is a dropper made entirely from Vivomer, a plastic-free, petroleum-free material produced by fermenting waste plant biomass into a plastic-like substance. One grade mimics glass, ceramic, rubber and plastic at once, so the whole component comes from a single origin and can break down as one. It is stable in daily use, then biodegrades once placed in home compost — even degrading in landfill at a rate similar to cellulose. Developing the flexible grade took 30–50 iterations, and the bulb was tested to more than 600 compressions to match a 30ml dropper's working life.

The design won the Pentawards 2025 Platinum in the Sustainable Design category, with the jury noting it performs like plastic in use but breaks down within 52 weeks, leaving no trace. It reached shelves with Katoa Botanicals and Sam McKnight, with a 2.4-million-unit annual capacity and rollouts planned across the UK, EU and US.

It targets the component most likely to escape recycling — the tiny mixed-material dropper — rather than yet another bottle redesign.

One substrate replaces four fused materials, so the product can break down as a single piece instead of resisting disassembly.

The material story is credible: stable in use, then home-compostable, with no fossil fuels or toxic additives such as BPA and PFAS.

Shelf appeal was part of the brief — the dropper and bottle were tuned to feel premium, proving sustainability does not have to trade away experience.

The smallest component can be the biggest waste problem; rebuilding it from the material up — one substrate that works like several and disappears after use — changes the product's whole story.

Following the June 2025 launch and the Pentawards Platinum, Shellworks said conversations were underway with around ten brands across the UK, EU and US, and planned lighter-weight 60ml and 30ml versions of the bottle through late 2025 and early 2026. The company cited more than 90 tonnes of conventional plastic replaced across its solutions, shipped to clients such as Wild, Abel, Eclo and Sam McKnight.