He turned 100 on the 8th of May, and the nation — quite rightly — stopped to notice. A live celebration at the Royal Albert Hall. A BBC One special. Public screenings of his most recent documentary, Ocean, at venues across the country. If there's one human being on earth who has done more to make ordinary people care about the state of our seas than Sir David Attenborough, I genuinely cannot think of who that might be.
I've been thinking about him a lot lately. Not just because of his extraordinary centenary, but because of an odd little thought that arrived while I was getting ready one morning. I was reaching for my refillable deodorant, and I found myself wondering: if Sir David Attenborough used a deodorant — and I imagine he does, he's 100, not a woodland sprite — what on earth would it be?
Bear with me. This is going somewhere, I promise.
The Man Who Changed How We See Plastic
There is a specific moment that scientists and campaigners now refer to as the "Attenborough Effect." It happened in 2017, when Blue Planet II broadcast footage of ocean plastic pollution so visceral, so ordinary in its horror, that millions of people changed their behaviour almost overnight. Plastic straw bans. Carrier bag taxes. A genuine cultural shift in how the UK thinks about single-use plastic. All of it turbocharged by one man and a television programme.
His 2025 documentary, Ocean, did it again — this time turning the spotlight on bottom trawling and the devastation wrought on ocean-floor ecosystems. The screenings held to mark his 100th birthday weren't just celebrations of a remarkable career. They were, in his own words, a call to action. Sir David has described Ocean as one of the most important films of his career.
That is not a man who does things by halves.
So. The Deodorant Question.
Here's what I know about Sir David Attenborough's values, distilled from a century of living them publicly: he believes small choices compound. He believes the natural world is worth protecting with the same rigour you'd bring to protecting anything you love. And he believes, with a quiet ferocity that never tips into preachiness, that humans have both the capacity and the responsibility to do better.
With that in mind, let's talk about what's sitting in most people's bathroom right now.
The average person in the UK gets through roughly one plastic deodorant container every two to three months. That's four or five a year. Over a lifetime — let's say, a century — that's somewhere north of 400 plastic containers. Most of them end up in landfill. A significant portion ends up somewhere worse. You don't need to have narrated a nature documentary to feel uncomfortable about that number.
Now consider the alternative.
One Object. For Life.
Lifelong Deo makes a deodorant applicator from premium anodised aluminium. It is weighted, sculpted, and genuinely beautiful to hold — the kind of thing you actually want sitting on your bathroom shelf rather than buried in a cabinet. More importantly, it is designed to last a lifetime. There is a no-questions-asked replacement guarantee if it ever breaks, which, given that it's made from anodised aluminium, seems unlikely.
You refill it. The refills come as a concentrated natural powder — arrowroot, zinc oxide, gentle plant-based actives — in 100% plastic-free, home-compostable pouches. You mix the powder with a little water at home. Nothing to throw away. No plastic film, no plastic tube, no plastic cap. Just a small paper-like pouch that goes straight on the compost heap.
And here is the detail I keep coming back to when I think about Sir David: every Lifelong applicator sold removes 1kg of ocean plastic, in partnership with Seven Clean Seas. Not carbon credits. Not a vague pledge about the future. Actual plastic removed from actual oceans. The brand's stated mission is to help remove one million kilograms of plastic from our seas.
I think he'd appreciate the specificity of that.
For Those Who Want the Impact Without the Premium Price
Lifelong also makes something called Lifelong Vibes — a refillable applicator made from 100% ocean-bound recycled plastic, sourced via their partner TIDE. This is plastic that has been retrieved before it reaches the sea, turned into something bold and colourful and genuinely useful. You choose your case colour and your ball colour. It's customisable, it's fun, and it's considerably more accessible in price than the premium aluminium version.
The point is the same: one applicator, used for years, refilled with a compostable pouch, replacing hundreds of single-use plastic containers that would otherwise exist in the world.
Sir David has spent a century arguing, with extraordinary patience and extraordinary skill, that the natural world is not something separate from us — something to be visited on weekends or watched on television. It is the thing we are part of. What we put in the sea comes back to us. What we throw away doesn't disappear.
A deodorant that removes ocean plastic, ships in a powder refill that cuts transport emissions by up to 94% compared to a conventional liquid deodorant, and comes packaged in something you can put on the compost heap — that is not a gimmick. That is exactly the kind of compounding small choice he has spent his life arguing for.
The Bathroom Is Where Values Live
I find it slightly embarrassing, in retrospect, how long it took me to think carefully about what was in my bathroom. I was the kind of person who carried a reusable bag, bought organic veg, and then chucked four plastic deodorant tubes a year in the bin without a second thought. The big choices were visible. The small ones weren't.
That is, of course, entirely the point of the Attenborough Effect. He doesn't shame people. He shows them something true and trusts them to respond. Blue Planet II didn't lecture anyone. It just made the ocean real.
Switching to a refillable deodorant is not going to save the ocean on its own. Nobody is saying it will. But it is one less plastic container. Multiplied by millions of bathrooms. Over a lifetime. That maths starts to look interesting.
Sir David Attenborough would, I suspect, have very little to say about deodorant specifically. But if he did — if someone at the Royal Albert Hall had slipped him a question about bathroom sustainability between the speeches — I like to think he might have nodded, in that measured, unhurried way of his, and said something like: yes, well, the small things do rather add up, don't they.
They do, Sir David. They really do.
Curious about making the switch? Lifelong Deo's refillable aluminium applicator starts from £49, includes a lifetime guarantee, and removes 1kg of ocean plastic with every purchase. If the premium version feels like a stretch right now, Lifelong Vibes — made from ocean-bound recycled plastic — offers the same refillable system at a more accessible price point. Find out more at lifelongdeo.com.