Laundry Pods and Sheets Are Exploding in Popularity. But Are They Safe?

Maybe you’ve seen the ads on Instagram: Little sheets of concentrated laundry detergent avoid the need for a big plastic jug of liquid soap. Instead, these perforated sheets come nestled in plastic-free cardboard packaging. Their ads describe them as the most "environmentally responsible way to do your laundry." The problem? Those nifty little sheets are held together by plastic. It's a polymer that's designed to dissolve in water, but most of it isn't filtered out on its trip through wastewater treatment plants. Instead, about 75% of the material finds its way directly into the environment. Coors Light Will Do Your Laundry So You Can Watch More Football That's a key finding from an Arizona State University study, published last year in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. The dissolvable plastic is called polyvinyl alcohol, often abbreviated to PVA. It's the same substance that holds the soap inside of Tide Pods, another product within the pre-measured laundry detergent segment that's exploding in popularity. Industry groups assure consumers that PVA breaks down on its own. But as brands tout the environmental benefits of their PVA-filled products, some scientists argue that more research is needed—especially as its use continues to increase, sending more PVA than ever into our waterways. Confusion among shoppers While liquid laundry soap still dominates the market, pre-measured forms of detergent are growing. According to an Adweek-Morning Consult poll, 82% of Americans used liquid laundry detergent in the last year. Nearly half (47%) said they'd used pods in the past year, while 22% used powder. Just 11% said they'd used sheets or strips, and 9% had used tablets. But those liquid laundry detergent users are open to trying new things. Over a third (42%) said they'd be willing to try pods, 37% said they'd try tablets, and 34% said they'd try sheets or strips. Just 27% said they'd be open to trying powder. Over three-quarters (78%) of respondents said the environment is a consideration in which kind of detergent they use, and 33% called it a major consideration. Still, consumers didn't seem to feel there was much difference in environmental impact between the different forms of soap. For those who said the environment was a major consideration, most used liquid (82%) and pods (46%) in the past year. Blueland, a sustainable cleaning supplies company that helped fund the Arizona State University research alongside Plastic Oceans International, uses compressed powder tablets rather than pods or sheets. They come in reusable tin canisters and Blueland ships refills in compostable paper packaging—which is all a lot cheaper than shipping liquid. "If you start to think about things differently, and redesign for the environment, there are massive economic gains to be had," said Blueland co-founder and COO John Mascari. What is polyvinyl alcohol? PVA is "somewhat of a newer material, in terms of our awareness of it and our usage of it," said Charles Rolsky, co-lead author on the Arizona State University study alongside Varun Kelkar, and now a senior research scientist at the Shaw Institute in Blue Hill, Maine. Rolsky is also director of science at Plastic Oceans International. "In the material science world, it's not as new. [PVA is] pretty well known and understood." But somewhere along the line, brands began to market it as eco-friendly—something it hasn't been tested for in the formats and scale that it's now being used. https://youtu.be/c9m0Uh130eI "The more we would monitor it, the more we would realize that it just was being portrayed as something that it wasn't," Rolsky explained. "And that's when things kind of started to get out of hand." In its early stages of developing a laundry detergent product, a few people recommended PVA to Blueland's founders as a way to avoid plastic containers, according to Mascari. But when they looked into it more closely, the Blueland team was uneasy about the lack of research. What happens to dissolved PVA after it's sent down the drain? So Blueland teamed up with Rolsky. "It turns out that when you put [PVA] into your laundry machine, it goes to your local wastewater treatment facility, but it doesn't fully break down," Mascari said. "About 75% of this PVA plastic—petroleum-based plastic—ends up back in the environment, in our waterways." https://youtube.com/shorts/gYoUBzVpH0w?feature=share Industry trade group the American Cleaning Institute (ACI) points to a different study that was published last year in the journal Tenside Surfactants Detergents. That study uses tests developed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to conclude that PVA does biodegrade in the environment. "The research on this is crystal clear that the PVA—also known as PVOH—these films that are used in those laundry and dish care products are specifically designed to be soluble and biodegradable in cold water," Brian Sansoni, svp of communications, outreach and memberships at ACI, told Adweek. "And they do meet specific criteria for biodegradability." The messy world of 'biodegradability' But it's not quite that simple, according to Chris Reddy, senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. In models like the ones that the OECD has laid out, microbes break the PVA down in a laboratory setting—simply showing that it can happen under the right circumstances. PVA has an "Achilles' heel" that makes it more likely that the compound will break down, Reddy explained. That's different than, say, the insecticide DDT or the compounds associated with Teflon, which are extremely tough and would not break down in a test like the one used for the PVA study. Still, biodegradability in the real world is a tricky thing to predict. "Microbes are like teenagers, and you've given them a chore," Reddy said. Like a 14-year-old asked to clean the basement, "there's a huge disconnect between having the capacity to do an action [and actually completing it]." It's unlikely, given its composition, that PVA will persist in the environment for a long time, Reddy said. But "that doesn't necessarily mean it's not going to create some injury before it breaks down." Microplastic tradeoffs Adweek reached out to Procter & Gamble about the PVA in its Tide and Cascade pods, but the company declined to give any comment beyond ACI's response. We also reached out to three laundry sheet brands, which specifically highlight the eco-friendly benefits of their products: Kind Laundry, Tru Earth and Earth Breeze. Tru Earth did not respond. "In [a] perfect world, we wouldn't be flushing anything down our sinks and toilets, but due to how the world has evolved, companies create products that are efficient to mass-produce," a spokesperson for Kind Laundry said in an email. The company also pointed to PVA's "low aquatic toxicity" rating by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group. These Striking Nature Ads Call Out Mercedes-Benz for ‘Greenwashing 101’ A spokesperson for Earth Breeze argued that PVA is a better option than the plastic jugs used to transport liquid detergent. "Earth Breeze removes more plastic from the ocean than the small percent of microplastic that may be contributed," the company said. "And we are committed to our carbon offset efforts." For Rolsky, the uncertainty around PVA's impact—combined with the increasing popularity of PVA-based products and the brands marketing them as "eco-friendly"—is cause for concern. We don't know for sure whether PVA in the environment will actually get broken down before it starts moving up the food chain and making its way into our food supply. "It's just greenwashing," Rolsky added.