Can smol really make my cleaning eco-friendly?
Let’s start with eco-friendly as a term.
It’s one we hear an awful lot here at smol because we’re a cleaning products company that cares passionately about the planet.
For something to be eco-friendly it must have:
“…a beneficial effect on the environment or at least not cause environmental damage.”
That’s according to the Collins Dictionary 2023.
So cast your eyes around the products and materials in your home. Has their production had a beneficial impact on the environment? Or at least not caused any environmental damage?
Were they manufactured from raw materials taken from nature? Did they require water and energy to produce? Were they grown using modern agriculture along with pesticides and fertilisers? Did they get transported from their place of origin to your home?
The more we think about the things we use… the more we see that virtually ALL products or services are going to have an environmental impact of some sort and pretty much NONE are going to have a positively beneficial impact.
So where does that leave eco-friendly?
Here at smol, we prefer to talk about products in terms of them being more sustainable or planet friendlier than alternatives.
Eco-friendly is very clear cut and means a product doesn’t harm the planet in any way. Sustainability, however, covers a wider spread of activities and issues that, when their needs are met, avoids the long term depletion of natural resources thereby protecting future generations.
It’s important for us to talk about the environmental benefits of an item, for example our refillable multi purpose surface spray. With a bottle-for-life and tiny refill tablet you can refill your cleaning spray with some water from your tap and save over 90% of your spray’s carbon footprint, not to mention never having to buy a new single-use plastic cleaning bottle again.
But we won’t pretend this somehow fixes the planet or has zero impact. If a product is sustainable it might mean that just one attribute of it is good for the environment, it doesn’t mean everything about its production is positively beneficial… as we now know, that’s not realistic.
At smol, we’re wary of brands who claim the above.
What matters to us is developing products that have less environmental impact than that of similar products.
5 ways to clean sustainably.
So if we want to be “eco-friendly”… but understand by definition that’s pretty impossible… how about some top tips around ways we CAN clean our homes and our laundry in a more sustainable way…
1. Refill NOT landfill.
Once something like a plastic cleaning bottle has been created, we keep it working at smol as your bottle-for-life.
Plastic recycling systems are failing, so if we can reuse a cleaning bottle again and again, then we don’t need brand new plastic. Refill stations are becoming more accessible in supermarkets but with smol you can refill bottles in the comfort of your own home. Our multi purpose cleaner and foaming bathroom spray are tiny tablets to dissolve with water from your tap. All the tablet packaging is compostable and recyclable and there’s zero plastic waste from your bottle-for-life.
And you only need one fabric conditioner, washing up liquid or stain gel bottle in your life. Refill your smol bottles from our clever cardboard cartons which are fully recyclable and don’t suffer the poor recycling rates that plastic does in the UK.
Refilling and reusing household plastic cleaning bottles is one of the simplest ways you can ensure planet-friendlier cleaning.
2. Concentrate on cutting carbon.
Concentrating our smol formulations gives greatly reduced carbon footprints through both production and delivery; and these savings really add up…smol is one of the only cleaning brands to have had a full Life Cycle Assessments of our products completed by independent sustainability experts.
And by removing the excess water and pointless chemicals from our products and by using rehydratable tablets we significantly cut carbon emissions as less transport, production and packaging is required. For example, switching to smol laundry capsules and having them delivered brings a 35% reduction in carbon emissions for you compared to buying a big brand capsule. Savings grows to 46% when switching to smol dishwasher tablets and 91% when considering smol sprays.
Of course, most items use energy and resources before they even reach you BUT if we can buy less stuff for the same amount of cleaning… we reduce our impact.
3. Ditch plastic when you can.
We never use virgin, new plastic for our bottles-for-life. There’s enough on the planet already so why continually make more?
When a liquid cleaning product works well in recycled plastic then we’ll use it. Plastic has half the carbon footprint of aluminium and a quarter of glass. Our Post-Consumer Recycled (PCR) plastic comes from empty water bottles that pour into our recycling systems via kerbside collections.
BUT when a product DOESN’T need plastic, we ditch it. For example our laundry capsules and dishwasher tablets come in 100% plastic-free cardboard. This was a world-first back in 2020 and we’re proud our innovations encouraged some of the big brands to follow suit.
4. Direct delivery.
Yes really!
Delivery of cleaning products straight to your door from a company like smol means more convenience and less hassle for you but it’s also cutting carbon. We use Royal Mail to deliver our laundry, dishwash and refill packs (who are already visiting most UK households daily) which means no extra vans on the road to your home.
Of course having a home delivery removes the hassle of struggling to and from the shops BUT research shows it is also more eco-friendly than a conventional shopping trip using a car. The average home delivery produces 4.093kg less CO2* than a trip to the high street or shopping centre. Carbon emissions fall further if delivery slots are scheduled carefully to keep drop points close and replacing petrol-powered vans with electric equivalents is even kinder to the environment.
5. Cruelty-free cleaning.
Aren’t most household cleaning items in the UK cruelty free?
Didn’t the UK introduce a ban on the testing of home products on animals in 2015? Surely the large multinationals no longer test on animals??
Well yes and no…
The 2015 ban actually only applies to the testing of finished household products on animals. Any individual ingredients that make up those products can still be legally tested.
In reality this means that your household cleaning items carry a very real risk of using ingredients that are tested on animals in the UK. In 2020 alone, there were still nearly 70 experiments carried out on animals in the UK to test out ingredients for household cleaning products. That’s one experiment every 5 days. These ingredients are then used by multiple cleaning products in many different items. BUT rest assured that all smol products are vegan and also cruelty-free with Leaping Bunny certification from Cruelty Free International.
And if you want to dip your toes into the world of planet-friendlier cleaning products, there’s no better way than with our household cleaning bundle. Our most popular top 6 smol swaps all in one box… super convenient and you’ll save, well… bundles!
https://smolproducts.com/pages/bundle
*vanarama 2020.
Try the Free trial pack (P&P £1) then 40% off the first paid pack of either dishwasher or laundry packs just for our members
