I personally use this brand and their pods for my dishwasher. TRANSPARENCY is key and Dropps has an entire page dedicated to their ingredients. They were voted Safe Choice of the Year by the EPA and all of their products are dye free. It comes packaged in cardboard and have a simple formula that does not har the ecosystem. I have not seen any other brand for dishwashers that surpasses the sustainability of these. I'll share a bit more in my upcoming cleaning routine, but all in all I highly recommend their pods!
So 4Ocean is a company that claims to pick up 1 pound of trash for every purchase of a bracelet that is also made from their very own salvaged ocean plastic. I recently watched a video on YouTube by Danye Har, where he does a deeper dive into the brand. He seems to be a lot more skeptical & critical than I am so if you'd like a different perspective absolutely check out that video. BUT, I personally do not think 4Ocean is green washing. I think their efforts to clean our ocean and beaches is incredibly visible. It takes funds to do clean-ups on the scale that they do and the bracelet is the vessel for those funds, plain and simple. But I would love to hear if you disagree.
I got some questions about whether or not Dr. Bronner's is green washing and I could not totally understand why anyone would think this brand would be anything but eco-friendly. Dr. Bronner's goes out of their way to promote their truly biodegradable formula for their soaps and to source their ingredients responsibly. There is an entire section of their website dedicated to how they source, produce, and donate to non-profits. Even coming in with an A rating from the Environmental Working Group. They do have soaps that come in plastic, but I don't classify that to be green washing. I'm confident that when an alternative exists they will switch. You can also get their bar soap that comes in paper!
This brand is sold in some big name retailers in the US but surprisingly they are not owned a conglomerate parents company. They are still owned by their original creators and have not lost vision of their original mission to provide clean beauty products. Most of their ingredients are safe for the environment and come packaged in more sustainable materials like glass and cardboard. Something else about this brand that I think is so so cool is that they have a recycling program for their products and you can earn rewards from them for recycling! You can track your recycling and then earn more from Pacifica themselves. I very much admire this brand for sticking to their mission from day 1. They just launched a foundation with a decent shade range so check it out!
The alternative to plastic... silicone. To start, silicone is a better alternative to thin plastic because it is much more durable. If nothing else, it is reusable for much much longer, making it a better alternative and not "green-washing" in my opinion. If you'd like to read more in depth about where silicone comes from and why it is a better alternative to plastic, check out this blog post by Earth Hero. It's a very extensive yet comprehensive post all about silicone. Read it here.
Lush
If you guessed that the brand I was referring to at the end of my video was Lush, you would be correct. Lush is a brand I have loved for years (nearly a decade) due to their dedication to the mission of making products that are better for the planet. There are absolutely questions I have for them about certain ingredients they use, and I will be asking those questions when I go to their factory. But, I think these are small areas that need improvement as opposed to "green-washing." In other words, I think a company that uses largely natural ingredients, pays their workers living wages, and is leading the way in package free products is not green-washing, they're just not perfect. But more on that after my visit (:
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