I have been using the ecover range of cleaning products for over a decade now – it never really replaced my powder laundry detergent completely (as I sometimes felt that clothes were not as clean as desired afterwards) but it did replace my fabric conditioner and some of the household cleaning products which I used.
“Ecover uses a holistic approach to ensuring that they make their products with people and the planet in mind. Ecover have strict standards for our ingredient selection and measure more than a dozen attributes of each ingredient including biodegradability, skin irritation, eye irritation and aquatic toxicity”.
Once again, like method, ecover branded products are a “starting point” for me – although there are many positive attributes to these products (see below), there is much room for improvement there are numerous things which bother me, including the presence of Palm Oil in their products (despite reassurance that this is from sustainable sources). The number of bottles I have for various cleaning tasks, not only fills up my cupboards, but also creates a lot of plastic waste (although refill bottles can be purchased for some products, and ecover have a reduced amount of plastic in their packaging as they use PlantPlastic). I really want to aim for Zero Plastic.
Additionally, having “strict standards”for, e.g. biodegradability, toxicity…) does not necessarily equate to being e.g. 100% biodegradable or non-toxic. I will be looking into further ways forward.
Other Attributes
- Cruelty-Free (certified by Leaping Bunny and Cruelty Free International )
- PlantPlastic Packaging: Plantplastic is the plant-based polyethelene (PE) plastic that method use in their bottles. Our bottles contain a mixture of plantplastic and post-consumer recycled plastic (PCR). By using plantplastic and recycled plastic, method greatly reduce the carbon footprint of our packaging. Using plantplastic also allows us to use a renewable material – sugarcane – instead of petroleum.
- B-Corp certified: The business equivalent of Fair Trade
