A glance inside the cleaning cupboard
tells the story: conventional detergents and cleaners do the job, but they come with an unsightly side effect — plastic waste.
By Barbara Hämmerl
Around 86 million tonnes of plastic are now sitting in the world’s oceans, and Germany alone produces more than five million tonnes of plastic waste every year.[1]
Anyone wondering what can be done about it might find the answer among a new wave of innovative startups — among them, the brand everdrop. Founders Christian Becker, Daniel Schmitt-Haverkamp and David Löwe have come up with a strikingly simple solution to the mountain of plastic waste piling up in our homes.
Everdrop started with tabs for all-purpose, bathroom and glass cleaners. Paired with a reusable bottle made from recycled plastic, they add up to a simple, gentler way to clean your home. The result: a 93 percent cut in plastic and a 77 percent cut in CO2, with nearly two million plastic bottles saved so far.
Laundry without plastic, fragrance or dye
But that’s far from the end of the story. Anyone who looks closely at household products and their ingredients quickly notices that petroleum-based detergent surfactants pollute wastewater — and that even their supposedly “sustainable” counterparts are sometimes made from palm oils, whose production drives mass deforestation. To tackle that problem, everdrop developed a laundry powder precisely calibrated to water hardness, cutting out unnecessary surfactants and easing the burden on the environment. For anyone who wants — or needs — to skip fragrance altogether, the PURE detergent comes with no added scent or dye whatsoever, making it especially gentle on skin. And true to form, none of everdrop’s products contain the microplastics still found in some conventional cleaners and detergents.
Clean dishes, no plastic
Everdrop hasn’t forgotten the dishes either. Its Naked Tabs are dishwasher tabs with no individual wrapping at all — meaning no plastic ends up in the machine or in the bin during the wash. The paper packaging the tabs come in is fully compostable, and can even be repurposed as a compost bag once it’s served its purpose. The same goes for all of everdrop’s packaging.
The journey toward a plastic-free — or at least plastic-reduced — life continues. We’re curious to see what everdrop develops next to make the world of cleaning a little more sustainable.
More information on everdrop is available here: https://www.everdrop.de/
[1] Figures from the Plastic Atlas 2019, Friends of the Earth Germany (BUND)
Images: © everdrop
