What do Spruce Ethical Cleaning Products stand for?

Spruce refillable cleaning products are there to not just help you attain a clean home, free of nasty chemicals and single-use plastics, but also to help you do good for the planet, starting from your kitchen. 

Here are some numbers to know:

• An average UK citizen roughly uses 150 single-use plastic water bottles. That is just water bottles. That does not even begin to capture an individual’s overall plastic footprint.

• Less than 7% of the plastic produced since the beginning has ever been recycled. You can safely assume that every single plastic item you have used since you came on this planet still exists. Yes, every toothbrush, every plastic toy, all those flip flops still exist.

• An average UK household goes through roughly 40-60 single-use plastic cleaning bottles in a year. Go on, check your under-the-kitchen-sink stash. How many did you find?

• Don’t even get us started on their contents. Cleaning products manufacturers often hide up to 300 different chemicals and innocently label it as “fragrance”. Mind blown?

• Indoor air in our homes can be up to 4 times more polluted than street air, even in the most polluted cities. The culprit? Toxic chemicals lurking in paints, adhesives, everyday home cleaning and personal care products. Wait, don’t they promise to keep us safe from 99.99% of everything that's bad in the world? 

• Plastic-pollution is only part of the problem. Case in point, we have been made to believe that glass is always better than plastic. Guess what? It's not that simple. Glass is not long-lasting. It has a much higher carbon footprint of production, transportation and recycling. Head-scratching confusing? 

Why do we call ourselves the Ethical Cleaning Brand?

• We have gone to extreme lengths to ensure we use truly earth-friendly packaging which will not create more waste, plastic or otherwise. We will reveal our packaging soon, so make sure you follow us on Instagram and sign-up to get our email updates.

• Our chemists have been hard at work optimising our product while strictly adhering to our brand values. We have chosen to work only with the top-rated ingredients on the EWG list. EWG.org is pretty much the independent authority on brand and ingredient ratings from both health and environmental perspective. In fact, if you are curious about how your current choice rates, we advise running a quick search. You will be surprised at how low some eco-brands are ranked both for human health as well as environmental toxicity.

• We have vowed to never greenwash our community. Believe it or not, there's currently no regulation that prevents brands from making false claims about their eco, sustainability, green or clean credentials. In fact, you can package up a toxic product, slap on a green leaf, add the eco-prefix and sell it as a green and clean product. Yes, we have all been cheated on.

• We're on our way to get our full B Corp certification which means we're legally bound to prioritise the good of people and the planet over profits. Offer refillable, single-use plastic-free products is just one aspect of our business, the real test is making our back end operations ethical and low footprint. This is the bit that customers often don't get to see, and where most of the waste is generated.

• We believe there is no climate justice without justice for the people. We therefore stand for Intersectional Environmentalism and do our bit to support the plastic collectors living in high poverty coastal regions, in order to help regenerate their eco-system. 

If you have ditched fast fashion and consider yourself a climate champion, you have the right to question if your cleaning products are ethically-made.