The range of new, compact detergent formats on the market, from liquitabs to tablets, is a result of a lengthy and ongoing process of investigation into ways to make P&G products more sustainable.
During the last 15 years, although you may not have noticed, there have been great changes in the laundry detergent you use. The early 90s saw the launch of compact detergents to complement the traditional big-box.
Super compacts were introduced a few years later, following a period of intense innovation. Nowadays you can also buy so-called uni-dose products such as tablets and liquitabs. The latter represented a major technological breakthrough, as they need to have all water removed from the product so that the protective 'skin' of the liquitab does not dissolve before use. Tablets and liquitabs give you great results in a tiny package. But P&G has greatly reduced the amount of standard washing liquid or powder you need for an optimal wash, too.
So far P&G has been able to reduce the recommended dosage per wash from 150 grams (dose before 1998) to 95 grams now for our 'regular' detergents. And the most recent compacts have even lower dosages. This research was carried out by P&G scientists and engineers but improving compaction has not been done in isolation from the rest of the industry.
These programmes have been carried out in association with the International Association for Soaps, Detergents and Maintenance Products (AISE), which has a long history of promoting safety and sustainability in the industry, through programmes supported by P&G.
In fact, in Western Europe the four most recent major compaction drives at P&G were part of AISE initiatives with the objective to improve the sustainability profile of the laundry products and their household use. In some cases, it has not been that easy to reduce the amount of detergent used per wash - although that has not stopped P&G from trying. For example, people who buy value laundry brands, such as Mr Proper and Vizir in Germany, Bonux and Gama in France or Daz in the UK, often prefer to buy big boxes because they tend to have large families. These boxes are heavy to carry home but these value brands also tend to be less concentrated.
To cater for these consumers, P&G developed a new technology to make powder detergents more soluble in water, took some of the non-essential ingredients out of its detergents and changed the manufacturing process.
The weight needed per wash has reduced drastically, by 28 per cent, making the boxes lighter and easier to carry and reducing the amount of energy needed for their distribution and transportation.
The volume, though, did not go down much - only about 13 per cent - because the ingredients we removed were high-density materials. But an environmental lifecycle assessment showed that reducing the weight of detergent had much more impact than reducing the volume. A side benefit of not reducing the volume as much is that the consumer only needs to reduce their dosage from 155 to 135 millilitres per wash, which is very similar when compared to their previous dosage.
Meanwhile, the quality of washes has actually improved thanks to the new technology used and the better solubility of the detergent in water. As a result, new formulations of laundry products such as Mr Proper (laundry detergent in Germany) do better than previous powders on all environmental indicators assessed.
Compaction research and development is a highly complex process, which is why it tends to progress in phases; in the last 10 years P&G has been able to cut the weight needed for an optimal result by 10 per cent in each compaction drive.
The result is that your wash now has significantly less of an impact on the environment. But P&G is not complacent: its work is ongoing.