In response to the global problems of the 21st century, it is becoming trendy to be environmentally friendly. With the slowness of Goliath, however, laws are beginning to impose environmental rules. And companies are trying to meet societal expectations. Hence the various eco-friendly campaigns and labels. And most people buy these products with the confidence that they are protecting the planet. But how much? Is it enough? Can we really sit back and relax?
What can eco-labels cover?
There are many criteria for a product to be environmentally friendly. It may be because its ingredients are natural, but not because they contain crops grown at the cost of deforestation. Or because they are made locally so they don't travel halfway around the world. Or the manufacturer uses renewable energy in the production process, or there is no waste, or the waste is recyclable or non-polluting. Maybe no or minimal use of potable water. Either your product is biodegradable, or your packaging is made from recycled materials, and so on. The ideal would be for the raw material production, the manufacturing, the finished product, the packaging, the transport and the waste processing to be environmentally friendly. But this is very rarely the case. Companies can boast of small and large partial results.
Example of how to achieve a green approach
Gucci's creative director announced just during the coronavirus epidemic that seasonal dresses are out of fashion and from 2020 they will only hold two fashion shows a year instead of the previous four, to make their clothes last longer. They are doing this to protect the environment and for a more sustainable future.
Luxury brands have also started to take their first baby steps towards a green approach. How environmentally friendly is Gucci? While the fashion industry produces 150 billion garments a year. Amongst them, Gucci continues to tailor its collections with shockingly water-intensive, toxic chemical-dyed, non-compostable fabrics. It makes a difference whether a dress is made from organic cotton or genetically modified cotton sprayed with insecticides and fungicides, bleached with chlorine, softened with formaldehyde. It matters what the raw material is.
What's behind plant-based products?
Plant-based products are made from plants. And plants have to grow somewhere. Sometimes we do this by taking the habitat and lives of other species that live with us. Just as oil palm plantations threaten the survival of orangutans, or the disappearance of the mist-covered panther. But neither is it necessarily good if they take over farmland. In our overpopulated world, growing crops for detergent production rather than food production seems rather environmentally exploitative. Not only do they require new land or the use of existing land, but they also need to be irrigated lavishly, processed by machinery and transported to the manufacturer. Does all this seem environmentally friendly? Yet plant-based cleaning products are also considered environmentally friendly, as they meet other criteria for being environmentally friendly, and even have a recycling label on their packaging, because the packaging is indeed environmentally friendly, but not the product itself. Here you can also find out which which packaging is best for recycling.
What is behind recycled products?
Recycled products are not made from new materials, but from existing ones. To use an example, it makes a difference whether you buy clothes made from plant, animal or synthetic materials in a Gucci store or whether you buy the same Gucci clothes six months later in a Hado and tailor them to your shape. The latter will be a recycled product. The point is that with recycled products, the product itself is made from recycled material, not just the packaging. Which is more environmentally friendly? Is the product whose packaging is a recycled PET bottle, while the contents of the bottle have been created by polluting the environment? Or the product whose packaging is not only recycled, but also the content itself? It's worth checking what exactly the recycled label refers to.
CYCLE is the world's first recycled cleaning product
Cycle products are at least 90% recycled. The brand also creates value from waste. It recycles the by-product of the biological purification of water used by Budapest residents: biomass. How? This is the subject of the next article in this blog.
What is the difference between a single circular cleaner from other environmentally friendly cleaning products?
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