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Is Grove Sustainable?

Is Grove Sustainable?

Grove Collaborative is a company that ships natural home care essentials straight to your house every month. Their monthly boxes contain all kinds of products such as deodorants, toothpaste, laundry detergent, floor cleaners, and more. Some of the companies that they work with are Method, Mrs. Meyer’s, and Davids. Grove Collaborative also makes their own products. They claim that their collection is sustainable, powerful, and healthy. However, there is one problem. Many of the products they ship use plastic packaging.

How true is the claim that they are sustainable, powerful, and healthy if many of their products use plastic packaging? 

On their homepage, under the section called “Imagine a World Beyond Plastic”, Grove Collaborative claimed that “By 2025, Grove will be 100% plastic-free”. Along with that claim, they also announced their new plastic-free soaps and cleaning supplies. Some of the products are also plant-based. So, what is the benefit of using Grove if you can find many of the supplies they offer at Target or Amazon?

Well, one Grove user named Christine R. wrote about her experience saying, “I like how easy it is to stay stocked up on high-quality products. Convenience without the high price tag!” The main draw to purchasing Grove packages monthly seems to be the convenience of having natural products shipped straight to your home. Grove Collaborative makes many claims such as offering carbon-offset shipping for every box. The way that carbon off-setting works with Grove is they purchase credits to fund products that decrease pollution in the atmosphere such as solar installations, wind farms, and more (3). In that way, they reduce carbon emissions in the environment to offset the emissions the shipping of their boxes causes. Two of the partners that Grove Collaborative works with to carbon offset their shipping is Native Energy and Natural Capital Partners.

Grove Collaborative claims to use a four-point standard for their products which is for them to be uncompromisingly healthy, beautifully effective, sustainably produced, and cruelty-free. The issue with this claim is the third point of their four-point standard. Not every product is sustainably produced if the packaging uses plastic. Grove Collaborative’s homepage even states “Only 9% of plastic is recycled in the U.S. and 24 billion pounds of plastic enter the ocean each year.” Yet, they still ship plastic products to many of their clients.

The bright side to this is that Grove is increasing the number of products using eco-friendly packaging for their collection. They are even manufacturing their own eco-friendly and sustainable products.

 Some examples of products that Grove sells are:

Although you can find many of the products they offer on Amazon, Grove is still a more environmentally friendly option because they carbon-offset their shipping. The only issue with Grove is that they still sell some products using plastic packaging while claiming that they make sure every product is sustainably produced. Whether or not Grove Collaborative will keep up with its claim to be completely plastic-free by 2025 is yet to be seen. 

Sources:

  1. https://www.grove.co/home
  2. https://www.grove.co/g/how-grove-works/
  3. https://community.grove.co/hc/en-us/articles/210493523-What-does-carbon-offset-mean-
  4. https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/17/natural-home-products-delivery-startup-grove-collaborative-bets-niche-will-win-over-the-amazonization-of-everything/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAQBYDaamN7IzW9SDTXSosXB9veZGamEspk5fY5b5bESeYw3TPJwZMuX1JRCBDcYlO-P1UmDCyavf65xqqcP_alzaDgXVJ8t3zZza2lHSKz0wG867rlbT9XNgiyaz3DOgj9iUbBQvdoyo3t3xjkVFUUZdTtmy2rrSI6OU9DZCHCN
  5. https://www.grove.co/blog/sustainability

 

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