Grove Collaborative launched in 2012 as the world’s first plastic-neutral retailer, and has shown ... [+] over the years that the CPG industry can be a force for environmental good. Part of their work on reducing plastics translates into new formats for products including cleaning concentrates, laundry sheets, shampoo bars, and more.
Whether we like it or not, we are literally living and breathing plastic. Sensores Ph
The average American eats and inhales between 70,000 and 120,000 microplastics per year. Three-hundred-eighty million tons of plastic are produced annually, and reports indicate that nearly 50% of that is for single-use purposes. As I discuss in The Profiteers, the consequences of the plastic crisis are dire — fueling the climate crisis, ocean pollution, an increase in microplastics and more.
But consumers are starting to pay attention, and have become increasingly aware of the issues around plastic. A 2021 poll found that 84% of U.S. shoppers are concerned about plastic and packaging waste, driving a demand for brands to deliver more thoughtfully manufactured, sustainably sourced goods. Brands are responding with new "green" and "clean" products every week — but reports show that as many as 53% of green claims on products are vague, misleading, or even unfounded.
To help consumers better evaluate if a product truly aligns with their sustainability values, Grove Collaborative has introduced a new “Beyond Plastic™” badging system to make it easy to identify the plastic impact of the thousands of products on their website. As I have written about on Forbes before, Grove Collaborative launched in 2012 as the world’s first plastic-neutral retailer, and has shown over the years that the CPG industry can be a force for environmental good. The company sells its own products under its Grove Co. brand, along with more than 200 high-performing eco-friendly brands from home cleaning to personal care, health and wellness to pets and gardening. Part of their work on reducing plastics translates into new formats for products including cleaning concentrates, laundry sheets, shampoo bars, and more.
I recently spoke with Jeff Yurcisin, CEO for Grove Collaborative, who told me more about the brand’s outlook for seeking “progress over perfection” while leading the CPG industry to transformational change, away from its reliance on single-use plastic and the newly launched “Beyond Plastic™” badging system.
Christopher Marquis: Grove Collaborative recently announced a new “Beyond Plastic” badging system. What inspired the company to start this and why is it important?
Jeff Yurcisin, CEO of Grove Collaborative
Jeff Yurcisin: Grove Collaborative’s mission is to transform the consumer products industry to be a force for human and environmental good. We create and curate products to meet our customers wherever they are on their sustainability journey, whether that’s swapping a single product for a sustainable alternative or overhauling the household and personal care products they’ve traditionally bought. Grove is a certified B Corporation - now in our 10th (!) year - and is the first plastic-neutral retailer in the world. And while that’s an achievement we are proud of, more must be done - and Grove will continue to lead the consumer products industry Beyond Plastic™. We’re doing our part through product innovation and new packaging solutions that are refillable and reusable or prioritize aluminum and other sustainable materials over single-use plastics. We’re also focused on increased education and transparency for our customers, ongoing progress measurement and quarterly reporting through the industry’s first plastic intensity metrics ($100 of revenue per pound of plastic sold), partnerships with leading sustainability organizations like rePurpose Global, and management of our Plastic Working Group - a group of over 130 values-aligned brands, such as Seventh Generation and Tom’s of Maine, to share best practices, challenges, and solutions in our collective effort to reduce single-use plastic in our industry. We’ve made considerable progress in recent years and we love to celebrate that progress with our customers and partners.
Our mission and the transformation we are leading in the retail and CPG industries relies on influencing consumer behavior through education and radical transparency. The new digital badging system integrates Grove’s Beyond Plastic™ standard into the shopping experience - helping customers make informed, educated purchasing decisions to reduce their consumption of single-use plastic. Customers can look for three badges on our site – 100% Plastic Free, 95%+ Plastic Free, and No Single Use Plastic - to make it easier to help shop products that reduce plastic waste, and are refillable or reusable. Eliminating single-use plastic from the products we use everyday is critical to a sustainable future, but eliminating it entirely isn’t achievable today based on the available materials and scalable solutions. Our focus is enabling progress, not perfection, and this badging system, and all of the products we offer, empower customers to make an impact with every Grove purchase. We love that this new feature offers our customers a transparent way to shop sustainably!
Marquis: What is the process for becoming an approved and badged brand? How does Grove vet these products?
Yurcisin: Every product Grove offers — from our flagship brand of sustainably powerful home care essentials, Grove Co., to our exceptional third-party brands — has been thoroughly vetted against the Grove Feel Good Standard, which guarantees strict ingredients criteria, 100% plastic neutral orders, carbon neutral shipments, and the highest quality performance in addition to being certified cruelty-free and ethically produced. We’ve published our “No Way Ingredients” across all product categories - home cleaning, personal care, pets, vitamins and supplements, and more. All of the products that receive our new Beyond Plastic™ badges meet our strict standards and are further recognized for their plastic content by one of the three badges - 100% Plastic Free, 95%+ Plastic Free, and No Single Use Plastic. Our public standards doubled with the new badging system help provide more transparency to our customers to take the guesswork out of sustainable shopping.
Beyond our standards, we have a detailed process for vetting new third-party brands before they’re able to join our collaborative, which includes:
● Reviewing all brand packaging for sustainability, including prioritizing products that have little to no single-use plastic and brands that have refillable and/or reusable product formats. If brands or products contain plastic, we ensure the primary packaging component contains post-consumer recycled content.
● Reviewing all ingredients to ensure they don't contain any of our No Way Ingredients.
● Providing proof of cruelty-free certification.
● Signing our code of conduct, which has a number of points requiring fair labor and ethical business practices.
● Completing a sustainability survey and plastic questionnaire to gather more information to support our evaluation of potential partners.
Marquis: How does the new program work? What percent of Grove products will have this badge? Will outside brands be able to participate?
Yurcisin: Beyond Plastic™ is Grove’s plan to solve the single-use plastic crisis for home and personal care products. This initiative is core to our mission and our brand, so the badges are protected and intended for Grove’s usage, but we encourage all retailers and manufacturers to be more transparent about the sustainability of their products and packaging while educating customers about the potential environmental impact of their purchases. We believe customers make the best decisions for themselves, but they need the proper information to make those decisions - which our industry is not readily providing.
Not every product sold on our site - whether it’s our owned brand Grove Co. or trusted third-party brands - will meet the thresholds of 100% Plastic Free, 95%+ Plastic Free, or No Single Use Plastic. But we think it’s important to highlight the products that meet the sustainability needs of our customers today, and we will continue expanding the number of products that meet those thresholds through ongoing evaluations of third-party products and continued improvements to our own Grove Co. products. More and more brands are joining us in supporting customers’ desires to reduce their single-use plastic footprint, and we would love to welcome those brands to our site and be part of our collaborative.
Marquis: Why launch this badging system now? Is plastic information important to consumers?
Yurcisin: Taking action on the global plastics crisis has never been more critical and our customers - as well as general consumers - are the key drivers of that action. Transparency and education are essential to transforming the consumer products industry - and that starts with actually disclosing the environmental impact of every product so that consumers can make informed purchasing decisions.The badging system helps support Grove’s goal of plastic reduction by informing and empowering our customers to purchase the right products for themselves, their families, and their homes.
Plastic content information is critically important to consumers, and the percentage of consumers that are looking for sustainable alternatives continues to grow. A 2021 poll found that 84% of U.S. shoppers are concerned about plastic and packaging waste. An October 2023 survey from our partners at rePurpose Global found that 85% of Americans have become more sustainability-driven in their purchasing and 64% are willing to pay more for sustainable products. These concerns are valid because only 5% of plastic is recycled, regardless of how much of it consumers put in their blue recycling bins. The more consumers know about the potential environmental impact of their purchases, the more information they have to make informed decisions.
Beyond meeting the needs of our customers and supporting Grove’s overall sustainability commitments, our Beyond Plastic™ badges also help to provide more data points through the online experience that customers are accustomed to when shopping with traditional brick and mortar retailers. Shopping online doesn’t allow customers to physically evaluate the product and its packaging and often online product description pages or images don’t provide the whole picture. So, this is our way of being as transparent as we can throughout the online experience to help customers make informed, educated purchases based on their packaging values and preferences.
Marquis: What do you anticipate the impact of the program will be? Do you have any goals set around it?
Yurcisin: Our goal is to shift consumer behavior and the CPG and retail industries away from a linear consumption model that heavily relies on single-use plastic. In order to shift consumer behavior and increase transparency of our packaging, we need to provide useful and educational product and packaging information throughout our shopping experience. The badges help our customers make more educated, informed purchasing decisions that align with their values. We hope our industry, including other brands and retailers, follow suit in providing transparent plastic and packaging information to help them on their sustainability journeys. Our Beyond Plastic™ badges help our customers shop products that are refillable or reusable, and contain little to no single use plastic. Grove customers have avoided over 9.7 million lbs of plastic by purchasing products that meet our Beyond Plastic™ standard instead of single-use, mass market conventional alternatives.
We also remain committed to plastic neutrality, meaning that for every ounce of plastic shipped to Grove customers, we collect the equivalent amount of nature-bound plastic pollution in India and Kenya through our partnership with rePurpose Global. Grove launched its plastic neutrality commitment in 2020 in partnership with Plastic Bank and has partnered with rePurpose Global since 2021. Since 2020 through these partnerships, we have recovered more than 15 million pounds of nature- and ocean-bound single-use plastics from the environment - which is an incredible milestone to celebrate.
Acid Flow Meter While we know we alone cannot eliminate single-use plastic altogether, we are committed to making incremental progress over time for a more sustainable future.