Stain-cleaning milk and mosquito-repelling coffee: The app that repurposes expired products

Hidden in the depths of your refrigerator skulks an old bottle of ketchup you bought for a long-forgotten barbecue. Before tossing it in the garbage, consider this: ketchup is surprisingly effective at polishing brass. Could it be the solution for that rusty old lock?

Reusables is an Instagram augmented reality filter that gives second life to long-expired products that are no longer fit for consumption. Simply scan the product’s bar code and the app will show you how it can be repurposed. It was developed by De la Cruz Ogilvy, a Puerto Rican advertising agency in partnership with its client, SuperMax, a local chain of supermarkets.

“We work with SuperMax to develop and promote its brand, which is to make life easier for its customers. This applies not just to the shopping experience, but to everything we do on a daily basis,” said Carlos Thompson, the president of De la Cruz Ogilvy. “It goes beyond reducing consumption — we want to educate people. In Puerto Rico, only 9% of waste is recycled. It’s not just about what you can do with the product, but also how you can get creative with the packaging and find another use for something you already have.” Did you know that milk can dissolve ink stains, oatmeal can dissipate refrigerator odors and coffee can repel mosquitos?

The team developed the filter in several phases. The first phase involved understanding the target audience and identifying trends. “TikTok is full of lifehacks — cool solutions to household problems. Like using coffee grounds to fertilize plants, baking soda for cleaning, milk for whatever. Inspired by this trend, we turned it into a platform for alternative product uses,” said Adriana Álvarez, the project’s creative director. “The original idea was an analog solution — we were thinking about swapping out the existing product label for a sticker that indicated the new use. But then we realized that making these stickers would conflict with our main goal of reducing waste. That’s when we decided to go with augmented reality instead.” The filter uses the same graphic design of the product label but changes the words on the image.

De la Cruz creates its own technology. “We developed it internally using a long-standing process based on artificial intelligence that enabled us to recognize product label images and then change them. You can use it anywhere, not just Puerto Rico, as long as the brand has the same packaging,” said Álvarez.

This is not the ad agency’s only partnership with SuperMax. An advertising campaign for another of their apps — Eye Tracker — won an award at the 2022 Cannes Lions Festival. It’s a tool for hurricane and storm preparedness that helps you estimate the right amount of supplies you need to stockpile, and avoid having expired, leftover products after the storm passes.

It’s only natural to be curious about the project’s potential. With numerous brands already on board and the agency actively seeking new partners and products, possibilities abound. “We believe it’s a globally scalable project,” said Álvarez. “We’d love for it to become a global thing, where other supermarkets and international brands team up with us and SuperMax to expand the filter. That way, we can truly make a big impact on reducing waste.”

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