On Our Packaging
A note on what we chose, why we chose it, and what we're still working on.
We had to make a tradeoff. Here it is.
Most natural detergent brands will tell you their packaging is recyclable, compostable, or planet-friendly without telling you exactly what that means.
We're going to tell you exactly what it means.
HoneyBird ships in a flat-bottom stand-up pouch made of a multi-layer film with an aluminum foil interior. We chose this material for one reason: it's the only consumer-scale packaging that keeps our formula stable.
Why the formula needed foil
Sodium percarbonate is the mineral in our detergent that releases oxygen on contact with water — it's what brightens your whites and lifts oxidative stains. It's also moisture-sensitive. In the wrong package, it slowly breaks down. The peroxide it would have released in your wash gets released inside the bag instead, and by the time you open it, you've lost a meaningful amount of the cleaning power you paid for.
We tested unlined paperboard canisters. In a humid climate, they failed within months. We tested kraft pouches without a barrier layer. Same problem. The foil-laminate pouch is the only format we found that holds the formula at full strength from our facility to your laundry room.
So that's the tradeoff: the package that protects the product is harder to recycle than the package that doesn't.
What we won't do
We won't put a chasing-arrows recycling symbol on the bag.
Multi-layer flexible films like ours aren't accepted in curbside recycling programs anywhere in the United States. The aluminum layer is what causes this — it can't be separated from the plastic layers at standard recycling facilities. Putting a recycle symbol on a package that can't actually be recycled is what the FTC calls a deceptive claim, and what we'd call lying.
You'll see chasing-arrows logos on plenty of products that don't deserve them. We're not going to be one of them.
What you can do with the empty pouch
A few options, in order of impact.
Reuse it. The pouch is sturdy, resealable, and food-safe. We use ours for dry goods, kids' art supplies, garden seeds, and loose items in the garage. One of our customers keeps her dog's training treats in hers. We've seen worse uses for a flat-bottom pouch with a zipper.
Hold onto it for our refill program. We're currently building a mail-back refill system. Once it's ready, you'll be able to send your empty pouches back to us with a prepaid label, and we'll handle the end-of-life through an industrial recycling partner. Subscribers will hear first when it launches.
Throw it away, in good conscience. If you can't reuse it and our refill program isn't ready yet, the trash is the honest answer. One pouch in a landfill is a smaller environmental cost than a detergent that doesn't work — because a detergent that doesn't work means double-doses, double-washes, and eventually a half-used bag of something else getting tossed anyway.
What we're working on
The packaging story doesn't end here. A few things we're building toward.
A refillable canister system. The pouch becomes the refill, the canister becomes the keepsake. This requires us to hit a volume threshold first — refillable systems only work environmentally when enough customers participate to justify the shipping math. We're getting closer.
A mono-material pouch. The packaging industry is slowly developing single-polymer films with the same moisture barrier as foil laminate. When one passes our stability testing, we'll switch.
A take-back partnership. We're in early conversations with TerraCycle about a mail-back program that doesn't require waiting for the full refill system.
The principle behind all of this
Most "sustainable" packaging claims in our category are marketing decisions made before the product existed.
We made the product first. Then we built the packaging to match what the product actually needed.
If we'd chosen a worse package to look greener, we'd be selling you a detergent that quietly loses potency on your shelf — and asking you to buy more of it, sooner. That's not the deal.
We'd rather tell you the truth about a foil-laminate pouch than sell you a cardboard box full of half-strength detergent.
Have a question we didn't answer here? Email us at [hello@honeybird.com] — we read every one.
Want to be the first to know when our refill program launches? [Sign up here.]