Cleancult is out to do away with plastic-laden, toxic chemical-filled cleaning options on the market today. And its latest offering may revolutionize laundry detergent for good.
Our homes are filled with plastic, but it’s not always our fault. Often, the products we rely on to keep our living spaces clean, hygienic, and safe from germs come packaged in plastic bottles and pouches. Sadly, some of the biggest home care companies in the U.S. are also some of the world’s biggest plastic polluters.
Take Procter & Gamble (P&G), for example, which owns cleaning brands like Gain and Febreze in the U.S. In 2023, the environmental group Earth Island Institute pushed ahead with a lawsuit against the company (and nine other major corporations) for plastic pollution in California’s waterways. That same year, Unilever, which owns some of the U.K.’s biggest cleaning brands, including Persil and Surf, was accused by Greenpeace of breaking its commitment to move away from single-use plastics.
All of this pollution has devastating consequences. Right now, research suggests there could be up to 199 million tons of plastic waste in the world’s oceans. All of this is linked to the disruption of ecosystems, entangling and suffocating marine animals, and exposing human beings to harmful microplastic pollution.
Some brands, however, are standing up to the giants of the cleaning world, and coming up with innovative, sustainable solutions to the market’s catastrophic impact. Cleancult, for example, is a certified plastic-neutral cleaning brand, specializing in all-purpose cleaners, dish soaps, bar soaps, and (its new) triple-action laundry detergent sheets. All of its liquid products can be topped up when you purchase its refill cartons, and with each purchase, it removes the equivalent of one plastic bottle from the ocean.
Cleancult, which is also certified cruelty-free, is the brainchild of Ryan Lupberger and Zachary Bedrosian, and without a doubt, it presents an effective, eco-friendly alternative to many of the other cleaning options on the market today. To learn more about the innovative brand, Find our chat with Lupberger below.
*This article is edited for length and clarity.
Ethos: It’s great to see the success of Cleancult — it is undoubtedly offering real pioneering, sustainable solutions in the cleaning market. Can you share more about what drew you to the issue of cleaning plastic waste in the first place?
Ryan Lupberger: I was raised in Colorado where there is more adoption of the natural, organic, and waste-conscious lifestyle. I was exposed to a lot of renewable brands in other categories, but the cleaning and household category was relatively untouched from a sustainability perspective. As we well know now, these household products create significant environmental impacts, not only in generated plastic waste but in the use of unregulated and potentially harmful ingredients used in cleaners, soaps, and detergents.
George Bernard Shaw famously said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” It’s a quote that helps me remember to challenge convention and the systems that exist today. We don’t need to live in a world of single-use plastic.
Ethos: And how did you take the idea and turn it into Cleancult?
Ryan Lupberger: As part of my post-graduate education, I participated in a role at the Unreasonable Institute, which is a social venture accelerator that incubates companies trying to solve the world’s biggest problems. There, I fell in love with entrepreneurship and the power to solve problems, which continues to inspire me today. By combining patented paper-based packaging, better-for-you ingredients, and carbon-neutral shipping, I co-founded Cleancult [with Bedrosian] to reduce the amount of single-use plastic on shelves that ultimately can end up in our oceans and landfills.
We welcome and celebrate all of our fellow eco-friendly brands looking to move the needle on plastic waste and toxic materials and ingredients. At Cleancult we are pushing research and development, particularly in our patented carton refill system. We had a pretty straightforward objective from the onset; eliminate plastic waste. We can no longer pretend this is a back-end recycling issue. We have to stop sourcing and using plastic on the front end.
Ethos: Most of your refills come in boxes reminiscent of milk cartons — why did you make that choice?
RL: We’re the first company in the world to put an array of cleaning product refills in milk cartons. This reduces about 90 percent of single-use plastic in the category. We have more than 14 pending patents and trademarks. True progress is about constantly moving the needle. Yes, carton waste is waste. Yet cartons are also 100 percent recyclable and, unlike plastic that remains for 700 years, carton’s paper-based materials biodegrade.
Cleancult is going toe-to-toe with plastic-laden, traditional “big brands,” in price, effectiveness, and access. Our goal is to make the sustainable choice part of the subconscious muscle memory; as automatic as reaching for that big orange bottle of detergent that has been used for generations without much thought.
Ethos: As we mentioned before, plastic-free is becoming more of a popular choice with consumers. Have you noticed a growing awareness and demand?
RL: We have been thrilled with the response from our consumers. We focused on hitting all the metrics of traditional brands in powerful effectiveness, price point, and access. But as a bonus, our products have clean ingredient formulations, smell amazing, and reduce single-use plastic by 90 percent. It’s what keeps our consumers coming back. We also have a lot of fun with our brand and recognize the potential of the cleaning ritual to actually be…dare I say…enjoyable.
Ethos: And sort of relaxing, too.
RL: Indeed, many teachers in mindfulness recognized the act of cleaning as a way of honoring one’s space and the blessing of our belongings. When you apply cleaning products infused with great-smelling essential oils, clean ingredients, and attractive, sustainable packaging, it does support a better mindset.
Ethos: Looking to the future, how do you see the cleaning industry and Cleancult evolving?
RL: We hope to continue to push the needle toward zero plastic waste and shift the dominance of eco products on the shelves of our grocery stores. We want to evolve the sustainable cleaning category from niche to mainstream while challenging the status quo of traditional big-box brands. We will continue to launch new products that remove plastic waste from the cleaning aisle, and we will continue to be “unreasonable” in our big expectations for a better planet.
Find the new detergent sheets on the Cleancult website and Amazon.
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