How to Get the Last Little Bits of Lotion Out of Your Bottle

This post first appeared in our weekly Make Waves Mondays email series on April 21, 2025.

Hey friend!

I wanna do something a little bit different with this week’s blog.

The last few have been a bit…dense? High-level? Info-dump-y?

Between my beef with Blueland, the cost of preventing vs. dealing with waste (coming soon to a blog near you!), and Terracycle's greenwashing habits…it’s been a lot.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing! I’ve gotten so many wonderful email responses from this community to all three of those topics and I’ve absolutely loved having further conversations about them!

But it’s still a lot. And there’s also a whole heck of a lot happening in the world around us right now. (Keep calling your reps!) 

So today I wanna take a little breather and offer some super tangible, money-saving, sustainable tips 😄

If you’ve ever ordered a bottle of our refillable body lotion (or our daily facial moisturizer in our old 4oz bottle packaging instead of the new 4oz jar packaging), towards the end of it, you’ve probably ended up with something that looks like this 👇

There’s enough in the bottle that you know you could still get a few uses out of it, but the pump just won’t suck it up anymore.

Yep, I’ve been there too 🙋♀️

As it turns out, there’s some kinda science that keeps lotion pumps from working properly when they’re touching the bottom of the bottle, which is why all of our pumps are just a liiiittle bit “too short.”

And because our lotion’s main ingredient is mango butter, it’s super thick, which means that just turning the bottle upside down probably won’t help much in getting the last little bits out, either.

So what are we to do?? 

Don’t worry, friend…you know I gotchu.

How to get the last little bit of lotion out of the bottle:

1. Warm up the bottle! You can either do this by putting the bottle into a hot water bath and letting it sit for a bit, or by popping it into the microwave for 15-20 seconds. Just please be sure to remove the pump or cap before putting it in the microwave!
   
   
2. When the lotion has warmed up, it’ll become liquid. If you’re going the water bath route, you may want to give the bottle a little swirl a few times to help the liquidifying process. Yeah…I’m totally making that a word.
   
   
3. Pour the lotion into a jar and give it time to cool down.
   
   
4. As the lotion cools, it’ll return to its original, super thick, creamy texture.
   
   
5. Send the empty bottle back to us to wash and reuse again and again again!

And that’s it! Easy peasy!

I know that our products ain’t cheap, friend. So the last thing I want is for you to wash money down the drain without getting every last drop possible out of them.

So file this blog away somewhere you’ll remember, and next time you’re down to that last inch or so of lotion, give this step-by-step a try!

And if you have any other tips for getting those last little bits out of a pump bottle, I wanna hear ‘em! Comment below and share them with me!

Happy Earth Week, my friend, and I’ll “see” you again oh-so-soon 🌎💙