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Why We Package Household Cleaning Products in Polyvinyl Alcohol
If you care about how environmentally friendly your household cleaning products are, this blog post will breakdown the main reasons why we use PVA films for ekologik's full range of household cleaning pods. You might be thinking that PVA sounds like a type of industrial glue, and if the PVA we used in our packaging referred to Polyvinyl Acetate, you would be right; however, the water-soluble polymer we wrap our cleaning formulations in is actually called Polyvinyl Alcohol – it’s a lot less messy!
What is Polyvinyl Alcohol? Why Do We Use it?
Naturally, as part of ekologik’s mission to create a cleaner environment inside and out, we want to help households move away from using cleaners that are packaged in disposable single-use plastic containers. To do this, through ekologik you can purchase a bottle for life and have refills delivered to you via the post. Of course, while innovating our sachets we had to question how we could make them equally as convenient (if not more) to deliver and use, in comparison to traditional household cleaning sprays…
PVA, or Polyvinyl Alcohol, is a synthetic water-soluble polymer. Don’t worry, that’s about as sciencey as it gets and it basically means that, unlike many chemical building blocks, PVA can be made to form films that are resistant to oils, greases and solvents, and which can also dissolve in water within a matter of seconds. They also have properties that help improve the consistency of our formulations, to make them all-round better cleaning products.
The Impact of Polyvinyl Alcohol on The Environment
Just this year the BBC published an article –River Thames ‘severely polluted with plastic’ - which cited the way plastic-containing cleaning products were contributing to microplastics within our oceans and rivers. It has always been paramount that our cleaning formulations and packaging avoid contributing to the problem of microplastic pollution.
Polyvinyl Alcohol has been classified by The European Chemical Agency (ECHA) as having no direct Health or Environmental implications. While PVA is a synthetic polymer, it is not a plastic of any kind and, once dissolved within our trigger-spray bottles, is completely biodegradable. This means it will totally breakdown in the environment in the presence of naturally occurring micro-organisms.
Hopefully this reassures you thatour full range of home-delivered cleaning products are created with the utmost consideration for the environment, as well as ensuringthe most effective eco-friendly cleaning solutions.
Here to help you live life cleaner,
Kaye
