This month marks the 12th Plastic Free July. Huge kudos to the Plastic Free Foundation for putting plastic in the spotlight with the vision of a world free of plastic waste. Game changing campaigning. Love to see it.

But... let’s be real for a moment. Have we really seen 12 years of progress in the supermarket aisles? Or has Plastic Free July become another 'calendar hook' and badging exercise for brands and corporations to dip their toe into once a year – to tick a box?

Take a walk down the cleaning aisle and you'll see so many brands maintaining the status quo - products that are 90% heavy water, packaged in single-use plastic, with 'eco' messaging on them. 

Realistically, the hard work has to be done by the consumer once you bring the products home: wash at 30 degrees, dose correctly, use eco-cycles, put things in the right recycling bin - etc, etc. Are any companies prepared to do the hard work, carrying out actual innovation that makes it easy for us to move to a more sustainable option?

A small switch from plastic to a cardboard box or *some* recycled plastic being used IS progress.. but is this enough? Probably not. Take dishwasher tablets for example - the biggest eco cleaning brand still sells ‘eco’ dishwasher tablets that are individually wrapped in single use plastic. If even the eco brands aren’t moving forward, what hope do we have for big, bad *non eco* brands?

So, there’s clearly a problem. It’s not really like us to just invoke a sense of doom and gloom and leave it there..

Plastic free July is a HUGE step forward in getting the conversation about plastic going. At Homethings, we do our absolute best to make cleaning as *clean* as possible…

We’re trying to make your in-aisle decisions easier, creating sensible solutions to the single-use plastic madness. And yes, we do have plastic-free dishwasher tablets, delivered through the letterbox. Makes sense.

SHOP OUR THINGS