Ecover review.

Ecover is quickly becoming the most well known eco-friendly brand, and overall this is well deserved.  All the cleaning product they make are fully biodegradable.  The only niggle I have is that while the plastic they use for packaging is fully recyclable I can't seem to find any information on whether they accepted they packaging back for further use.  This seems to defeat the purpose of the three R's: Reduce, Re-use and Then Recycle.  Not only do they not seem to reduce consumption by making bulk packaging more available but they don't seem to Reuse the packaging they produce in the first place.  Of course, this is not to say you can't reuse they packaging at home your self, but the only information on refill comes in a new bottle for old trigger sprays.  So while they produce products that don't impact on the environment the packaging it comes in only serves to further consumption of an unsustainable product i.e. the production and further use of plastic.

Having raised this problem I did some further investigation into is.  Ecover sells to shops in bulk with the idea that these shops will sell refills, therefore reusing packaging.  However this relies on other companies selling the cleansing products at an affordable price per litre, which very rarely seems to be the case.  More to the point Ecover website advertises that that these refills are done from 25ltr containers.  I have yet to see this in any shop nearby and would very much like to know where one is because the closest shops that do refills only re-fill from 5ltr containers, which I can by myself.  While this option is nice in theory, it would be better is the company offered the option of taking back packaging for reuse.