What Makes a Product Eco-Friendly?
Don’t want the nerdy details? Skip to the tl;dr (summary)
Way more goes into sustainability of a product than you can see when you’re scanning your grocery store shelf. A lot of the digging I’ve done for my guide to eco-friendly living** is on sustainability over what’s called “cradle-to-grave” of the product, meaning from the acquisition of the materials it’s made of, through manufacturing, through transport and purchase, though household use, all the way to what happens when it’s thrown away.
This is hugely important because on the “cradle” end, manufacturing can have an enormous impact on the environment from its use of water, chemicals, electricity (and however it’s generated), transportation, and packaging. On the “grave” end, the disposal method of the product can also have a big impact - is it recycled? Thrown into a landfill? Burned? How long does it take to break down? What does it break down into?
This has spun off into a new term - “cradle-to-cradle”, which emphasizes the need to reuse as much as possible (“return it to the cradle”) rather than casting it off as waste (“sending it to its grave”). It’s taking me some time to get used to the new term, but I think it’s an important distinction so I’m going to make an effort to use it.
A good number of up-and-coming brands are publicly focusing on the cradle-to-cradle sustainability of their products. Here’s how.
MATERIALS AND RECYCLING
A brand’s choice of materials and where they source their materials from is a huge factor in the sustainability of the product.
Recyclable Materials - Good, but not great
Paper, plastic, and glass that will go in your recycling bin when you’re done. It’s important to know that recycling is imperfect.
What’s wrong with recycling?
Many plastics are non-recyclable. Look for the recycling numbers 1 and 2 on products; these are the materials that almost all recycling facilities can process.
Facilities to process recycled materials often can’t handle the amount of material they’re sent.
And even recyclable plastics can only be recycled so many times before they end up in a landfill.
While it’s better to recycle material than to throw it out, we want to minimize the material we throw into either bin. (I’ll do an article on this later.)
Recycled Materials - Better
These products are made with materials that have been recycled already. These have a double benefit: significantly less energy was used to produce them, and recycling facilities were funded in the process which helps those facilities expand to process more material. Material can only be recycled so many times, so eventually these will end up in a landfill.
Compostable Materials - Great, but with a catch
These are less common, but are extremely good for the environment because they typically break down into natural materials. Unfortunately the infrastructure around composting is terrible, and the only place I can reliably find a compost bin is outside my local Whole Foods. Compost bins and facilities are important because it takes heat to compost materials, and if compostable materials are thrown in the trash, they typically won’t get hot enough to break down and will become just another piece of landfill trash. Level 2 will dive deeper into composting and how you can compost yourself.
Where can I compost?
Whole Foods has compost bins outside their stores. No need to go in, no need to buy anything.
Search “compost drop-off near me” for other local resources.
Search “compost pickup service near me” to find pickup services near your house.
Or compost yourself! I found this guide to composting in any living situation helpful. Stay tuned for when I try it myself.
Zero Waste - #GOALS
This one is ideal, and avoids trash and recycling. Composting does fall under this bucket, but only if the product is actually composted. Zero waste products can also have no packaging, or have packaging that is reused basically forever. (Like that old salsa jar you washed and stashed in your cupboard, which now holds the spices your mom gave you to use in college. No? Just me?) This one’s tough because it’s typically what you make of it. That salsa jar could have fallen in the recycling bucket if I hadn’t decided to keep using it.
A few ways to choose #zerowaste:
Be equipped! Single-use plastic is like candy; if you have it around, you’ll inevitably go for it. Have
Bring your own reusable containers to your farmer’s market. Then the vendors can reuse the containers they brought. This also works sometimes at the grocery store, like when you’re ordering from the deli or getting nuts from a dispenser.
Whenever you’re about to buy something, look around to see if there’s a packaging-free option.
A few brands that make good material choices:
Method
Ingredients
Transportation
This one is HUGE! How materials and products are transported from source to manufacturing plant to store makes up an enormous portion of a company’s emissions. Method puts emissions from distribution methods at 1/3rd of the total emissions their company produces. And while extremely low-emissions options like Tesla’s semi-truck aren’t scheduled to hit the market until later this year, there’s still plenty of ways a company can decrease their emissions. The chart below shows the difference transportation choices make in how much CO2 is emitted to move one ton of cargo one mile.
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Notice a trend?? The longer we’re willing to wait for our products, the less CO2 we emit, by a lot.
So…what does this mean for my next trip to the grocery store?
For starters, buy local. The fewer miles a product has to travel to get to you, the better. This means a couple things:
Buy veggies from your local farmer’s market (click to find a farmer’s market near you), or from stores that partners with local farmers (like Whole Foods). Personally I’ve found that farmer’s markets have prices comparable to grocery stores in my area, and as an added perk I love the vibe so much more.
Restaurants that source locally are also awesome. I know some California restaurants like Mendocino Farms and nationwide chains like Sweetgreen prefer to buy from local farmers rather than having their foods shipped across the country.
If you can buy a product at a local store, don’t buy it on Amazon! Even if the product is coming from a long ways away, the fuel it takes to lug 100 bottles of shampoo to a grocery store is way less than what it takes to individually deliver each bottle to a person’s house. Plus it uses way less packaging.
Some companies are working to improve the efficiency of their transportation methods, like Method, which was able to reduce the emissions of their truck fleet by 20%. I’ve factored all of that into the products I recommend on my guide to eco-friendly living**, so you don’t have to spend time researching for yourself.
And don’t pick rush shipping unless you really need it. Patience is a virtue for a reason - it can help save the planet.
Manufacturing
METHOD
Almost all of Method’s household cleaning products are on this list, and for good reason. The company was founded by two college grads, one of whom was a climate scientist with a chemical engineering degree, who made sustainability a focus from day one.
Materials and Recycling: Method uses primarily recycled plastic to make their bottles (100% recycled plastic for nearly all of their PET bottles, 25-50% for their HDPE bottles), which not only diverts plastic from landfills but also significantly reduces the energy required to make them. PET and HDPE (recycling numbers 1 and 2) are widely accepted by recycling facilities, however the materials used in the…squirt and pump…thingies…are not widely recyclable and are made with mostly virgin plastic. A third-party sustainability consultant evaluates all materials and ingredients.
Ingredients: There’s a long list of ingredients Method won’t use, including phosphates, which pollute waterways, and triclosan, which poses antibiotic resistance concerns. One day I will become an expert for you all and dig deeper into the real impact of the ingredients they do use, but I’ve yet to find any significant concerns.
Transportation: Method has created a fleet of delivery trucks that run on at least 20% biodiesel and emit about 20% less carbon per ton of cargo, per mile, than your average shipping service.
Manufacturing: Method offers financial incentives to their suppliers and manufacturers for reducing energy use and emissions.
Through emissions tracking, Method reports that they have been able to reduce their overall carbon emissions by 14% so far (time frame unspecified). They also purchase carbon credits to offset the emissions they produce.
Unfortunately, it’s really hard to know whether the shower cleaner in your grocery store was transported by plane or train. You probably don’t have the time to dig into it, but that’s why I made this blog - to do the research for you. While it’s difficult to find answers to these questions because companies don’t typically publish this info, everything I have found has been used to compile A Practical Person’s Guide to Eco-Friendly Living**. Make that your next stop!
To recap...
Summary of article here