The Problem With Cleaning Products That Nobody Talks About
Walk through any grocery store cleaning aisle and you are looking at a row of bottles that are roughly 95% water. You paid for the packaging. You paid to ship water across the country. You will throw the bottle in a recycling bin that may or may not actually recycle it. Then you will buy another one next month.
Multiply that by a hundred million households, and the waste numbers become staggering: approximately 500 million plastic cleaning product bottles are discarded in the US every year.
Mark Sorensen built Cleanery around a different premise: ship the concentrated active ingredients in powder form and let consumers add water at home. One small package. One reusable bottle. Zero shipping water. Drastically lower packaging waste.
In this conversation with Nour Abochama, Mark explains the chemistry of cleaning without synthetic surfactants, the economics of refill models, and why plant and mineral powered is not just marketing copy.
The Just Add Water Model: How Concentrated Powder Cleaning Works
The core innovation in Cleanery is reformulation of liquid cleaning products into stable, concentrated powder form.
For a cleaning concentrate to work as a powder, several challenges must be solved:
Stability - active ingredients must remain stable in anhydrous (water-free) conditions. Cleanery formulas use plant-derived and mineral surfactants that are inherently more stable in powder form.
Dissolution - the powder must dissolve quickly and completely in water without clumping or leaving residue.
Dosing accuracy - Cleanery uses pre-measured pods to eliminate dosing errors at home.
Efficacy at target dilution - the diluted product must clean effectively at the concentration designed into the formulation.
Plant and Mineral Powered: What It Actually Means
Surfactants do the cleaning - they bridge between water and grease, carrying grime away. Conventional products use petroleum-derived surfactants. Plant-derived alternatives include:
- Decyl glucoside - derived from glucose and coconut/palm; mild and biodegradable
- Sodium cocoyl glutamate - amino acid-based, derived from coconut oil; excellent biodegradability
- Coco betaine - derived from coconut oil; low irritation profile
- Lauryl glucoside - glucose-derived; mild enough for personal care applications
Mineral actives in Cleanery formulas: sodium bicarbonate (mild abrasive), citric acid (scale removal), sodium percarbonate (oxygen bleach), essential oils (antimicrobial activity).
The Reusable Bottle Model: Economic and Environmental Logic
Plastic recycling rates for cleaning product bottles in the US are approximately 30%. That means 70% go to landfill despite the recycling symbol.
A single durable bottle plus concentrated refill pods creates a dramatically lower packaging footprint. One reusable bottle plus 12 monthly refill pods replaces 12 single-use plastic bottles annually. Over 5 years: 1 reusable bottle vs. 60 single-use bottles.
Ingredient Safety in Cleaning Products
Cleaning products are less regulated for ingredient disclosure than personal care products. Until 2017, manufacturers were not required to disclose any ingredients for general cleaning products in the US.
The EPA Safer Choice program evaluates cleaning product ingredients against safety standards for human health and environmental impact - it is the most credible voluntary standard in the household cleaning space.
Key Takeaways
- Conventional liquid cleaning products are roughly 95% water - concentrated powder refill models eliminate the waste and carbon cost of shipping water in single-use plastic bottles
- Plant-derived surfactants (decyl glucoside, coco betaine, lauryl glucoside) are biodegradable alternatives to petroleum-derived cleaning surfactants
- Plastic recycling rates for cleaning product bottles are approximately 30% - reusable bottle systems dramatically reduce lifecycle packaging waste
- Cleaning products are less regulated for ingredient disclosure than personal care products; EPA Safer Choice certification is the most credible third-party safety standard
This article is based on Episode 41 of Nourify & Beautify with Mark Sorensen of Cleanery. Watch the full conversation on YouTube or listen on Podbean.
