If the tabs are 96% plant and mineral based ingredients, what is the other 4%? piece

Magic. But if you really want to know, the other 4% of ingredients are synthetic ingredients that contribute to the overall cleaning performance of the tabs. None of our ingredients are animal derived and no nasties.

Why are your tabs wrapped? What’s PVOH? piece

Our tabs are wrapped in PVOH (a water soluble synthetic material) which is demonstrated to be 100% readily biodegradable against OECD (an intergovernmental economic organisation) standards. Lots of scientific papers that have looked into this show that PVOH is not a contributor to microplastics e.g. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/tsd-2020-2326/html. We are hoping to move away from PVOH in the future once a solution can be found but at the moment 'naked' tab wrapping for this kind of product causes lots of wastage in the manufacturing process and a much shorter product shelf life which leads to more resource usage. We don’t think that the ‘naked’ tabs are actually that eco yet.

Is using a dishwashing machine less eco than washing by hand? piece

Dishwashers being less environmentally friendly is a myth – using one can be much more energy and water efficient, especially when the machine is only used if full. Money.co.uk and Which.co.uk contains some great info on it.