The plastic film around laundry detergent pods is supposed to be biodegradable. But typical wastewater-treatment plants don’t offer the optimal conditions for it to actually work; and the material, called polyvinyl alcohol, often ends up polluting the environment, according to a recent study. (Along the way, the plastic can suck up antibiotics or heavy metals and get into the food chain.) Standard liquid laundry-detergent jugs often aren’t recycled, and are heavy and require a lot of energy to ship. So, a handful of laundry product companies are moving to a different form factor: Detergent in dissolvable sheets.
Typical liquid detergent has a couple of challenges: both the amount of plastic that’s used for the packaging, and the amount of water in the product, making it heavier and increasing the carbon emissions of moving it through the supply chain. Some detergents are as much as 80% water. “You’re now shipping a very heavy liquid all around the world when it’s completely unnecessary to be doing so,” he says. “Your washing machine is right there—just let your machine add water instead of shipping water.” Making laundry detergent more concentrated helps. But making a detergent in sheet form eliminates water, and plastic, completely.
It may take longer for bigger brands to move in this direction, Frey says, especially because they profit from the fact that consumers often overdose liquid detergent and then end up having to buy more. (Some brands also recommend using as many as three laundry pods in a load, even though one should do the job.) But he’s hoping that the whole industry can move in this direction. “We obviously want to be kind of at the forefront of this movement,” he says. “But at the end of the day, the end goal is the same. We would prefer the industry to just be far more sustainable.”