About eight years ago, I noticed something in our sales data that I hadn’t expected. People were buying a lot of refills.
That sounds obvious in retrospect, but at the time it stopped me. It meant people weren’t replacing their brushes. They were keeping them and coming back for more powder. They were doing exactly what we’d designed the brush to do from the beginning, which was to last. And they were doing it because they wanted to, not just because it was convenient.
It also meant they cared, not just about sun protection, but about not throwing things away unnecessarily. That told me something important. If our customers were willing to refill, we had an obligation to make the refill worth it.
At the time, our refill was a plastic cartridge. You’d unscrew it from the brush and screw on a new one. There was real sustainability value in not replacing the whole brush, but every refill still meant a plastic component going into the trash. We were asking people to care about waste while quietly generating it ourselves. That felt like a contradiction I needed to fix.
Harder Than It Sounds
I spent years trying to solve it. The obvious answer was to find a non-plastic refill material, but obvious answers in product development rarely turn out to be simple ones.
We tested a sample-pack style refill, a pouch you’d tear open and pour into the brush. It failed immediately on a problem I should have anticipated. Once the powder left the package, the expiration date and batch code went with it. I wasn’t willing to put a product in someone’s hands without those details intact, so that idea went away.
We tried compostable materials. They didn’t fit the tolerances we needed. We tried paperboard. It looked promising until stability testing revealed it simply wasn’t as durable as we needed it to be. That one hurt because it seemed like the right answer right up until it wasn’t.
Eventually we landed on aluminum. It performed exactly as we needed, and it’s genuinely sustainable in a way the plastic cartridge never was. Aluminum is recyclable. While it holds the same amount of product, the pod itself is significantly more compact than the old plastic refill cartridge, which means less energy to manufacture, less space in shipping, and a smaller carbon footprint from our facility to your door.
How It Works
The brush is now designed as one integrated piece. The bottom cap unscrews, you slide in the aluminum refill pod, and the cap goes back on. That’s it. The pod fits cleanly into the base of the brush, and the powder flows through it as it always has.
The refill is available for our SPF 30 Translucent, SPF 30 Touch of Tan, and SPF 50 Translucent powder brushes, the same brush, the same pod system, across the line.
Cap off. Pod in. Cap back on. That’s how you refill.
The Brush Itself
The reason refillability matters is that the brush is worth keeping. We’ve always believed that, which is why refillability was part of the original brush design over fifteen years ago, before we even had a refill to sell.
The bristles are designed to deposit mineral powder evenly and buff it in with the circular motion that’s essential to how the product works. It’s not a cosmetic brush that happens to hold sunscreen. It’s a sunscreen delivery system that happens to be elegant enough to live on your bathroom counter and travel in your bag.
How long a brush lasts depends on its care and proper cleaning, but the intention has always been that this is something you keep, not something you cycle through. The refill system exists to support that intention. How to Clean Your Brush covers how to clean and maintain your brush to get the most out of it.
Designed to be kept. Built to work beautifully, day after day.
Why This Matters Beyond the Product
I didn’t set out to build a sustainability story. I set out to fix a contradiction. We were selling people on the idea of keeping their brush, and then handing them a plastic component to throw away every time they ran out of powder. The aluminum pod closes that loop.
It also reflects something broader about how we think about product design. The best version of a product isn’t the one that’s easiest to manufacture or cheapest to produce. It’s the one that does its job well enough that people want to continue using it.
That’s the brush we set out to build from the beginning, and the aluminum pod is the most exciting version of that commitment yet.
If you haven’t tried the refill system, the refill pod is the place to start. And if you’re new to Brush On Block and want to understand the thinking behind how these products are designed, Designed for Real Life covers the broader philosophy.
The brush you keep, with a refill system designed to support it.
FAQ
How does the Brush On Block refill system work?
The brush has an integrated base with a removable bottom cap. To refill, unscrew the cap, slide in the aluminum refill pod, and replace the cap. The pod feeds powder through the brush exactly as the original fill does.
What is the refill pod made of?
The refill pod is aluminum, chosen because it protects the powder and significantly reduces the environmental footprint compared to the previous plastic cartridge design. It is recyclable.
Which brushes are compatible with the refill pod?
The aluminum refill pod system is compatible with the SPF 30 Translucent brush, the SPF 30 Touch of Tan brush, and the SPF 50 Translucent brush. Each product has its own corresponding refill pod.
Why did Brush On Block switch from the plastic refill cartridge to the aluminum pod?
The original refill was a plastic cartridge that screwed onto the brush. While it reduced waste compared to replacing the whole brush, it still generated a plastic component with every refill. After years of development, testing compostable materials, paperboard, and other options, we landed on aluminum as the solution that met our durability requirements and our sustainability goals. The pod is also more compact than the old cartridge, reducing shipping weight and carbon footprint, while holding the same amount of product.
How long does a Brush On Block brush last?
How long a brush lasts depends on its care and proper cleaning. The brush is designed to last through many refill cycles. How to Clean Your Brush covers how to clean and maintain your brush.
Quick Facts: The Brush On Block Refill System
Brush On Block powder sunscreen brushes have been designed to refill since the brand launched over fifteen years ago. The current refill system uses an aluminum pod, recyclable and compact, that slides into the base of the brush when the bottom cap is removed. The aluminum pod replaced a previous plastic refill cartridge as part of an ongoing sustainability commitment. The pod is available for SPF 30 Translucent, SPF 30 Touch of Tan, and SPF 50 Translucent brushes. While the pod holds the same amount of product as the previous cartridge, its compact size reduces shipping weight and carbon footprint. How long a brush lasts depends on its care and proper cleaning, and the brush is designed to last through many refill cycles.
