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Dissolvable Plastic | Should We Use it in Our Products?

When we develop products, we stick to these 3 principles:

  1. It has to biodegrade (that means it will decompose into reusable nutrients)
  2. It has to have an eco certification (meaning the ingredients that make our products are 3rd party accredited, so they are best in class for you and our planet)
  3. It’s gotta be plastic free (both to reduce the carbon footprint and, again, to biodegrade)

When we started developing our plastic free liquid dish soap, we wrestled with what plastic alternatives we could use to store it.

The first option we explored was PVOH, PVA, or PVAL - otherwise known as Polyvinyl alcohol.  

PVA/PVOH gained popularity with Dishwasher pods and has since been used to contain a variety of Dishwasher, Laundry detergents and Shampoos for a number of ‘eco brands’, including both 'pods' and also 'laundry sheets', which are becoming increasingly popular.  

PVA/PVOH is technically 'plastic' because it is pliable - bendy and stretchy - but it's not the same plastic as a plastic bag because of what happens to it when it contacts water.

Many companies claim PVA/PVOH is ‘biodegradable’, but when we started digging deeper, this ‘eco-claim’ wasn't so cut and dry.

Why?

PVOH DOESN’T ‘BIODEGRADE’ IT ‘DISSOLVES’

In our research, PVOH does not biodegrade so much as it dissolves into a "non-harmful" monomer, and while those molecules can biodegrade, the time it takes for them to actually biodegrade is a little foggy.  Years, decades, 100 years or more?  Our research wasn't able to provide any conclusive timelines. 

Advocates for PVOH say this is not a problem and it’s a lot better than having mounds of 'solid' plastic floating around the ocean, but it still is leaving ‘something’ behind.  We just don't yet know the impact - if any - of having increasing amounts of these molecules floating around our waterways.  That said, our research to date does not suggest that those molecules are what we you would think of as 'micro-plastics'.

PVOH IS OIL BASED = NOT CARBON NEUTRAL

The other challenge with PVOH is that it is derived from petrochemicals (oil based and therefore against dev principal 2).  That said, right now, it's really hard to avoid petrochemicals - hence why we are in the climate crisis we are currently in - because even most 'plant based' cleaners (including our own) contain small amounts of petrochemicals.  

 

WHY BEESWAX PODS?

Given the unknowns about biodegradation, long term impacts and the reliance on petrochemicals, we chose not to use PVA/PVOH and instead developed our own pod made from all natural materials.  Materials we were already familiar with from our other products - beeswax, soy wax and naturally occurring oils and resins.


What’s great about natural materials is that you don’t need a pile of research to figure out if they decompose - you can just toss them in the earth and know they'll go away.

BUT THERE'S A FLIP SIDE TO OUR BEESWAX PODS
  1. They cost more: R&D is time consuming and expensive.  We are still in the early stages of developing our pods and there are many improvements to be made - both from the design/materials and the manufacturing - and so that means we can't make them as cheaply as their PVA/PVOH counterparts.
  2. There is still 'waste': While the pods are natural and they can be repurposed, reused and composted, there is still 'waste' left behind.  PVOH on the other hand just dissolves.

When it comes to 'price', we did come up with a work around through the Plastic Free Club, but we feel that if we really want to make a change, we need to hit the MASSES and that requires a major drop in the price.  

And this has led us back to a core question.  Should we re-visit PVA/PVOH?

It’s definitely a step forward from traditional plastic, and we're already exploring an improvement that could see a similar film made without oil, but that is a couple years out (at best).  In the meantime, we are left deciding:

SHOULD WE CONTINUE TO DEVELOP OUR OWN ‘WAX SOAP-PODS’ OR SHOULD WE INCORPORATE PVOH?  JOIN THE CONVERSATION, COMMENT BELOW.

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Comments

  • Given what we are learning about the effects of microplastics, I don’t think any plastic is a good idea. The, similar, new alternatives made from seaweed and algae also will dissolve, so may be a better option. We don’t know the long term effects of adding more nutrients to the water ways, but at least they are nutrients that start out in water ways, unlike fertilizers. My vote is no. If you add a returnable “deposit” to the current beeswax pods, perhaps you can use them multiple times before turning them into candles or something?

    Melissa Boote on

  • Monomers still present too many unknowns. Until we are sure that the dissolved sludge is non-toxic, please stay away from it. I joined you to stay away from plastic and would like to keep it that way. I’ll keep biting the bullet on the extra cost of the wax.
    Does your consumption of Beeswax to create the tubes, create too much of a strain on our humble bees? Can you use soy wax? Gosh there’s no simple answer – but let’s steer away from anything ‘plastic’.

    Karen Haynes on

  • Mind your beeswax! A big concern of mine is how many chemicals in oil-based plastic products are turning out to be endocrine disruptors. With all of the other environmental toxins and biological factors that cause hormone imbalances, if I can avoid a product that has potential over time to mess my body up more, I will. We have to be vigilant in changing our consumption habits, and if I have to learn to pay more for packaging that will hurt the planet less, well then I’ll figure it out.

    Verity P. on

  • Please stick with no plastic or petrochemical content. I thought there was a corn alternative to making a dissolvable “plastic”. If you don’t know what the stuff dissolves into, you don’t know its impact on wildlife drinking water or ocean creatures swimming in it. You also don’t know how it affects the aquifers that this solution eventually sinks into. You also don’t know how it affects the soil in which our food is grown.

    Lois Case on

  • I’m torn. I use PVOH bags for my dog’s waste when I walk her (urban area; no choice to use a scooper instead) because I know they break down… and I know about the monomers. It is good that there is less physical waste left behind, but what do the monomers do to the soil? How does it affect worms and insects and things that eat them? On and on…

    I would prefer the wax over more PVOH. I think consumers have the right to be choosy. If you can make the initial purchase inexpensive to get people on board (coupons or something) and then have cost-effective bundles, maybe that’s the way to ensure the price doesn’t scare people away.

    Also, maybe I misunderstood, but are the wax packages reusable for the same purpose? I live near a co-op that does refills for lots of items. I would be interested in reusing whatever packaging I get in that context. (E.g., I use glass spice bottles and liquid soap containers over and over.) Selling these and/or setting up refill pop-up shops in local areas, which could reduce shipping costs and the associated carbon footprint, might get people on board.

    Thank you so much for your work. This work is so important.

    Karissa on

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