Laundry detergent without a plastic bottle, light in weight and easy dosage

Laundry detergent in the form of detergent strips. No plastic bottle, light in weight and easy dosage. Boen wants to make a huge impact with this beautiful product that is already available. For the future, we would like to see production even closer to home, to reduce the transportation emissions.

What is it that you do?

If everyone in the Netherlands were to use detergent strips instead of liquid detergent, this would save about 70 million plastic bottles a year! * We want to market detergent strips as accessible as possible (read: affordable and available in the local supermarket) to offer a realistic alternative to liquid detergent. Less plastic in our daily lives, and ultimately in the ocean of course.

*: We assume 2.5 washes per week, x 52 weeks, x approximately 18 million Dutch people, divided by 30 washes per bottle (and usually there are just 20 washes).

Where do you see the greatest opportunity and challenge in terms of sustainability?

It is often cheaper and easier not to live sustainably. If we succeed in bringing a sustainable version to the market that is also better and (ultimately) cheaper than the current liquid detergent, then we can make a real impact.

Do you have any further sustainable tips for daily life?

An easy one: stop eating fish. Did you know that almost half of the plastic dumped into the oceans comes from fishing nets? If we want to tackle the plastic soup, it certainly makes sense to use less plastic ourselves, but cutting fish from your diet (from industrial fishing...) is a super easy way to give our oceans some love.

We tend to feel very good about trendy products in plastic-free packaging and how easy it would be if we could save the climate solely by consuming only fair products. Unfortunately, that is not the case, because if take a hot shower with your shampoo bar for half an hour, your good intentions are almost immediately destroyed. So, in addition to using fair products, look at where the impact of your behaviour is: turn the temperature down and shower a little shorter (which also saves you some on the energy bill).

Which social media accounts, podcasts, films, documentaries, etc. do you recommend?

Rixt: Seaspiracy. Rules for international waters are scarce, and control is impossible. Watching this documentary made me realize that we should not wait for international governments (takes too long) to take care of our oceans. We need to produce less plastic that ends up in the ocean in the first place and eat less fish to have fewer fishing nets in the sea.

Dingena: The Salt of the Earth. Beautiful documentary about the life of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. The suffering he experienced during his work on the deprivation of peoples caused him to return to the healing effect of nature and the beauty of our earth. I won't reveal what he does next to give something back to that earth.