How Sustainable + Eco Friendly Is Smol?

Image credit - Smol. This page contains affiliate links

Is Smol worth the hype?

You’ve probably seen Smol plastered over social media and now you’re wondering if they’re actually eco-friendly.

Smol is the first green cleaning brand I cover as part of my new ethical brand directory where I research sustainable brands to see if they are as sustainable as they say.

The reason I’m starting with Smol is I’ve had so many questions from you guys about them (feel free to let me know what brand you’d like me to cover next in the comments below).

I’ll be exploring ingredients, packaging, manufacturing and sharing ways I think they can improve as a company.

It’s great that so many individuals (like yourself) are trying to reduce their carbon footprint, but I feel strongly that more responsibility lies with companies to continue reducing the impact of their products on the environment.

Hopefully, you find this post useful and discover if Smol’s values align with your own.

Disclosure: This page contains affiliate links to Smol, which means if you decide to make a purchase, I get a small fee for referring you. If you’d prefer to support my work in a different way, you can buy me a virtual coffee. <3

Coming up

Ownership + profit
Smol’s green claims + credentials
Manufacturing + carbon footprint
Packaging + materials
Supply chain
Transparency
Smol’s ingredients
- Palm oil
- Petroleum + microplastics
- Controversial chemicals
What could Smol improve on?
What I like about Smol
How much is Smol? A cost breakdown

Smol summary

Smol is a good choice for:

People switching from mainstream cleaning brands
People who need convenience to make their eco-friendly choices work
People who are on a budget
People who are focusing on reducing their single-use plastic packaging

Smol is not a good choice for:

People who want a product with natural or plant-based ingredients
People who like strong synthetic fragrances
Cloth nappy users due to not being able to adjust the dose (it is generally recommended to add half a dose to the initial short wash so you may need three pods each time).

try Smol before you buy

You can trial Smol’s laundry detergent pods or dishwasher tabs for free, you just have to cover postage for £1.

Free laundry trial for £1 p+P

Free dishwasher trial for £1 p+P

1. Who Owns Smol?

Smol is a British company created in 2018 by two former Unilever employees, Paula Quazi and Nick Green.

As of 2020, Smol has a net worth of £4.6 million so they are classed as a small business.

The founders’ goal was to sell directly to consumers so that they could make laundry products cheaper.

2. Smol’s Green Claims + Credentials?

Smol claim their products have fewer chemicals than mainstream brands, like Persil and Fairy. They do not use unclear phrases like “free from nasties” and they do not claim to be “chemical-free.”

This means that if you’re switching from one of the multinational corporations to Smol, fewer chemicals will enter the waterways.

Smol also call their products eco-friendly, however, they are not certified by EU Ecocert or any other green certification to back this up.

I’ll talk more about Ecocert criteria in the ingredients section.

IS SMOL CRUELTY-FREE AND VEGAN?

Yes! Smol are certified by Cruelty-Free International (leaping bunny) and the Vegan Society which proves their ingredients and final products are not exploiting animals.

This is important because mainstream brands, like Fairy, Ariel and Persil all test on animals and some products contain animal derivatives, like tallow (fat).

Smol do not sell to countries where animal testing is required by law.

3. Smol’s Carbon Footprint And Manufacturing

Manufacturing locally reduces carbon emissions and protects against human rights exploitation in overseas supply chains.

WHERE ARE SMOL’S PRODUCTS MADE?

Smol’s products are all made in the EU except for their hand sanitiser which is made in the UK.

Manufacturing locally lowers their carbon footprint and means their factory workers have better human rights protections.

CARBON FOOTPRINT

I could not find details about Smol transporting their pods, including methods of transportation, but it will produce much lower emissions to transport lightweight concentrated pods than heavy bottles of liquid and powder.

I also couldn’t find any specific details about Smol’s carbon emissions, however, Smol used an independent sustainability consultancy called Eloop to measure their carbon footprint across the lifecycle of their products.

They found that you can save 46% carbon by swapping from a mainstream unethical brand to Smol’s dishwasher tablets and 35% if you swap to their laundry capsules.

“You may not realise that 70% of any laundry capsule’s footprint generates from how we use that capsule in the home. If we were just to take the simple swap of purchasing smol capsules rather than a benchmark product, Smol’s carbon footprint is 35% lower.”

— Smol

3 WAYS SMOL ARE REDUCING THEIR CARBON FOOTPRINT

Creating concentrated pods significantly reduces their carbon footprint compared to liquid spray bottles which are approximately 300 times heavier.
Reusing spray bottles reduces the production of plastic bottles (and prevents waste).
Using fewer chemicals and smaller pods means Smol is manufacturing fewer chemicals and reducing transportation because they can fit more in a box.

It is clear that Smol has taken steps to reduce its carbon footprint, but more detailed information about this for consumers is something I’d like to see.

4. Is Smol’s Packaging Eco-Friendly And Recyclable?

a hand holding smol tablet and empty plastic bottle

Smol’s products either come in a cardboard box (the pods) or a recycled plastic bottle.

The cardboard is new rather than recycled, but is certified by the FSC. I could find no further information about what forests the boxes are sourced from and their logo doesn’t reveal whether they are using “FSC 100” or “FSC MIX.”

There are a lot of criticisms about the FSC, their lack of transparency and failure to manage forests properly (deforestation hasn’t slowed down) so I do not like to rely on the FSC alone for proof of sustainability.

The bottles for their fabric softener and multipurpose spray are made from 100% recycled plastic bottles. It is much more eco-friendly to use the resources that already exist, and there is more than enough plastic in existence.

Smol’s fabric softener is a concentrated liquid so you send back your plastic bottles in the post for Smol to reuse. The pump and the yellow part are kept by the customer to reuse each time which minimises waste.

5. Smol’s supply chain

I could find no information or policies about Smol’s supply chain. It’s important that companies audit their factories to protect the people making their products.

I can’t find any information saying which country in the EU Smol’s products or any proof they have a system in place that protects their workers.

On a more positive note, Smol manufacture their products in certified cruelty-free factories.

6. Transparency

When it comes to ingredients, Smol is one of the more transparent green cleaning companies.

Unlike most brands, they list a full list of ingredients for each product on their website, including laundry products. I’ve had multiple eco-friendly cleaning brands tell me their detergents are a trade secret.

You won’t find Smol’s ingredients on the product page which is slightly inconvenient but a quick Ecosia search tracks them down quicker than trying to navigate their website.

It also isn’t clear what each ingredient is, where it’s derived or what it does which is hard for most consumers to understand. However, whenever I email Smol about specific ingredients, they always get back to me quickly and answer all my questions.

Their ingredients are not all eco-friendly but I appreciate their honesty.

To improve in this area, I would like to see more information about Smol’s supply chain and the working conditions of their employees.

7. Smol’s Ingredients

Petroleum + microplastics

Ingredients can either come from a ‘natural,’ plant-based source or a petrochemical source, however, natural doesn’t always mean it is sustainable. Palm oil is a great example of a natural ingredient that is harmful to the environment.

Because of Smol’s transparency (and because I know what to look for on ingredients lists now), it was clear that they use petroleum derivatives and synthetic ingredients in their products.

Their key ingredients in the laundry detergent are the same surfactants big corporations use and aren’t eco-friendly.

They also have liquid polymers on the list, like “acrylic copolymer” which is considered a microplastic by the Beat The Microbead campaign.

I emailed Smol (from my personal account) to ask why they use synthetic ingredients and this is the response I received:

“We do include some synthetic ingredients - however these are at a vastly reduced level compared to the leading brands. We want to provide an option that is eco-friendly but still gives people the performance they are used to with Persil and Ariel - which we are pleased to say is the case having been independently tested against industry standards. In this way we can provide an eco-conscious alternative to the Ecovers, Methods etc but with superior cleaning results and at a cost point that is accessible to so many who would otherwise never be able to afford a more sustainable option.”

— Smol

They also informed me the copolymer in the dishwasher tabs helps the crockery shine.

Does Smol use Palm oil?

Smol do not use palm oil as an ingredient in their products, but some of their products do contain palm oil derivatives (like glycerin, which is made from either coconut, palm or soy).

Smol has said their palm oil derivatives are always certified by RSPO and have received a ‘best rating’ from Ethical Consumer for their palm oil policy.

PHOSPHONATE

Chemical name: Sodium Diethylenetriamine Pentamethylene Phosphonate
Function: they stop hard water minerals from leaving residues on clothes

I reached out to customer services to ask why Smol use phosphoric acid in their detergents when this is a controversial chemical and this is their response.

“We do use Phosphonate in our laundry capsule – this is not to be confused with Phosphate. Phosphonates do not bioaccumulate and cause no chronic or aquatic toxicity. Phosphonates will photodegrade, hydrolyse and biodegrade.”

— Smol

It is true, phosphates and phosphonates are two different substances.

Phosphates are very effective at softening water and were previously used in all laundry detergents. Unfortunately, they are very damaging when released into bodies of water and were making rivers inhabitable to wildlife.

Phosphonates are similar but they are not a concern for the environment. They aren’t biodegradable but between 50-97% of them can be removed in water treatment systems. They do, however, remain in the sludge.

Since 2017, the EU has banned phosphates and restricted phosphonates so that they can only be used in tiny amounts.

Ideally, no phosphorus-containing ingredients would be used in any product, but it is far more complicated than that because they’d need to be replaced by something else.

Either way, thanks to the ban, only 1% of phosphorus in rivers and seas is from detergents. The main source is fertilisers from agriculture.

OPTICAL BRIGHTENERS

Also called: Fluorescent whitening agents (FLW) optical brighteners (OB)
Chemical Name: Disodium Distyrylbiphenyl Disulfonate.
What they do: OB are synthetic dyes that stick to your clothes and reflect UV light to make your clothes appear whiter

Smol use optical brighteners in their laundry detergents. When I asked about biodegradability, they replied:

“Unlike many other products, Smol uses optical brighteners that are readily biodegradable according to the OECD 301F biodegradation test.”

It’s worth noting that the EU only requires ingredients to be aerobically biodegradable. The EU’s Ecocert label lists optical brighteners, including Disodium Distyrylbiphenyl Disulfonate, as substances that only biodegrade when oxygen is present, therefore, it is not anaerobically biodegradable.

Detergents are used in large amounts by consumers who expect their water to be treated before it’s released into the environment. The problem is that our privatised UK water companies are regularly leaking untreated waste into water sources. In 2020, raw sewage was dumped into rivers 400,000 times. Then in 2021, the Conservative MPs voted to continue letting water companies dump waste in UK rivers.

Optical brighteners are acutely harmful to fish in the short term and aquatic plants, like algae. So even if Smol’s ingredients should biodegrade before they hit rivers, it’s hard to know if your water is getting treated, particularly during periods of heavy rain.

There appears to be a lack of research into OBs impact on the environment and I don’t have the knowledge to know if some OBs are better than other OBs.

It’s also worth noting, there is consumer demand for white clothing - if there wasn’t then companies, like Smol, wouldn’t bother putting OBs in their formulas because they don’t make clothes any cleaner.

It would be interesting to see how many people would choose an OB-free pod if Smol provided the option.

PERFUME

Synthetic fragrances often contain a problematic chemical called phthalates which are used to ‘carry’ the fragrance. On their ingredients list, Smol have listed “perfume” and their FAQ seemed vague so I sent them an email to ask.

This was September 2020, so Smol had fewer products available, but their response was reassurance that their fragrance was derived from ethically-sourced essential oils.

I think this is great as I avoid buying any products that use a synthetic fragrance.

If you prefer a strong fragrance you may not find products like their fabric softener compare well to an artificial scent (though I haven’t tried it).

Smol has now got a fragrance-free (non-bio) laundry capsule if you like to avoid all allergens, including essential oils.

References for ingredients section

EU Ecolabel criteria for laundry detergents
Phosphonates ecotoxicity
Phosphonates - EPA pdf
Detergent index- biodegradability
Optical brighteners wastewater

8. What Areas Could Smol Improve On?

Smol are a relatively new small business that has gained popularity quickly with people who want to reduce their single-use plastic.

What customers may not realise is there are controversial ingredients inside Smol’s products. If a brand labels their products “eco-friendly” you expect the ingredients to be safe for the environment.

The problem brands face is that petroleum derivatives are cheap. If they were to be replaced with a sustainable alternative, like sugar surfactants, the price could go up dramatically making eco-friendly living inaccessible to those on a low income.

I would like to see Smol offer an additional range of plant-based products alongside their current options with a clear explanation of the difference so that consumers can make an informed choice. This way, people with more money can choose to spend extra on a much more eco-friendly product, whereas people on a tight budget will still be able to reduce their single-use plastic and carbon footprint.

One final thing I’d like to see Smol improve on is its paper sourcing transparency with a transition to 100% recycled packaging being the end goal.

9. What I Like About Smol

I am a big fan of the convenience Smol provides to people wanting a more eco-friendly lifestyle without the hassle. I’ve not tried Smol yet but I do have a subscription to Wild deodorant and I appreciate the recurring order that fits through the letterbox.

The ingredients are the reason I haven’t tried Smol yet so I’m unable to review them. However, the majority of customers I’ve heard from have said they are effective, particularly Smol’s dishwasher tablets.

This is important because if a product doesn’t clean well then the customer will go back to plastic bottles.

Smol’s reusable bottles for their cleaning sprays are made from recycled plastic. Using resources that already exist prevents them from going to waste.

Lots of the newer plastic-free pod brands make their reusable bottles out of virgin plastic (like Ocean Saver who call themselves plastic-free while mass-producing poor quality plastic bottles) so this is a good thing.

I like that Smol manufacture their products in Europe rather than in countries where labour abuse and poverty wages are common.

I’ve seen Smol getting a bad rep amongst eco-friendly circles because of their use of optical brighteners, but there is definitely a place for brands like Smol.

They are honest, they answer your questions, and they have made significant steps to reduce their environmental impact since they started up.

If you compare Smol from when they started up to where they are not, they have made significant progress.

They may not be the most ethical or sustainable brand, but they appeal to less eco-minded folk who currently use the big-name brands (who are not cruelty-free and contain higher levels of harmful chemicals).

If everyone who currently uses Persil switches to Smol, that would be a dramatic reduction in plastic bottles produced - which is always a good thing.

Tap this image to pin it to your cleaning board on Pinterest:

10. Where can you buy Smol and how much does it cost?

This section contains affiliate links to Smol, meaning if you decide to sign up with my links, I get paid a small commission for the referral. This post has not been sponsored (Smol aren’t aware that I’m writing it). Using affiliate links covers my website running costs and allows me to keep all my content free; I appreciate your support!

Smol keep their costs down by selling directly to consumers; they say you can save up to 50% of the cost.

You can buy their products separately, or you can purchase a starter kit - I’ll explain what’s in it at the end of this section.

Some products are more expensive to buy up front, like, the surface sprays, because they include reusable bottles. The refills work out a lot cheaper

Here is a breakdown of what each Smol product costs:

Dishwasher tabs

A pack of Smol dishwasher tablets containing 30 tabs costs £4.60.

You can start by signing up for a free trial of 9 tablets, although, you have to cover the £1 postage fee. When you sign up for a free trial you also subscribe for by letting Smol know how often you turn your dishwasher on. This can be changed or cancelled at anytime.

Dishwasher trial £1

Laundry capsules

Smol’s 24 capsule pack of laundry pods costs £4.50; choose between bio or non-bio. The fragrance-free laundry pods (non-bio) are £5.50 for 24.

You can start by signing up for a free trial of 9 capsules (either bio or non-bio), only covering the £1 postage fee. When you sign up for a free trial you also subscribe by letting Smol know how often you use your washing machine. This can be changed or cancelled at anytime.

The new fragrance-free laundry capsules are not currently available in the free trial.

Laundry trial 9 for £1

24 Fragrance-free pods £5.50

Fabric Conditioner

Fabric conditioner comes in a twin pack for £10. Each bottle contains 64 doses and is expected to last for 3 months on average, so you should get 6 months out of a twin pack, depending how often you use it.

Smol’s softener isn’t a pod; it’s a concentrated liquid so will arrive in a recycled plastic bottle each time (although you reuse the pump).

Once you’ve got four empty bottles, you can post them back to Smol (in the original box if you have it) and they will reuse them. Each time you return your bottles, Smol will donate a pack of laundry capsules to the Hygiene Bank, a charity working to end hygiene poverty.

buy fabric conditioner x2 for £10

3 spray bottles cleaners smol - orange, green, purple

Surface sprays

Smol’s surface sprays work out at £1 for a refill.

You begin with a starter pack for £10 which includes one of each spray and 3 reusable bottles for life. After that, refills arrive in a pack of 6.

A pack of 6 refills includes: