Seventh Generation Zero Plastic Laundry Detergent Tablets Review | Zero Waste, Biodegradable Laundry Detergent Tablets
The Top Line:
We love, love, love Seventh Generation as a company and think they make fabulous products. We are a hesitantly NOT a buy. Here is our reason: Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent Tablets only offers a tin of just 36 tablets, making it really expensive. For comparison, Dropps (our review) give you a bulk of 800 pods for a price cut of ~30-60%. The other issue: the tablet may not dissolve completely in delicate loads.
For homes with smaller storage space; Seventh Generation fans; and/or a preference to tablets/pods versus powder, we see this as a good option. Reason: non-toxic, fragrance-free, dye-free, plastic-free, greywater-safe, sulfate-free, Leaping Bunny Certified, B-Corporation.
Check out our Big Zero-Waste Laundry Roundup Review on The Reduce Report.
The Breakdown:
Cost & Products: $15.49 for 36 laundry tablets or $46.95 for the Zero Plastic Complete Bundle (saving 20% by the bundle) via the Grove Collaborative Shop
How ‘Clean’ Is This? Really, really clean - it’s Seventh Generation, so here are the list of accolades: non-toxic, no fragrances, no dyes, no optical brighteners, no plastic, safe for greywater, and safe for septic systems. No animal ingredients and no animal testing, Leaping Bunny Certified, hypoallergenic, sulfate-free.
Whew… we’re sure we missed some, but Seventh Generation is one of the pioneers in green.
Packaging: Packaging is made of steel, one of the most recyclable and recycled material, according to SG. We verified by our own research here, here, and here. Quote from the Arch Daily:
“When recycled, the consumption of electricity lowers by 80%, causing a lower environmental impact and eliminating completely the extraction of raw materials.”
Purchasing & Shipping: We bought ours from the Grove Collaborative site, which we reviewed extensively here. $49 gets you free shipping, unless you have a VIP account.
For this delivery, many of our tins showed up pretty banged up and dented. We reached out to Grove Collaborative and are waiting to hear back (we will update you!). There wasn’t much leaking — a dusting inside the box, which you can see in our photos — an nothing was actually broken or unsealed. Hopefully this is just new-product hurdles that get worked out over time.
Good to Know: The addition of Seventh Generation Zero Plastic Products may change our advice on the Grove Collaborative site. We still wish the site was better organized.
Extra Info: Seventh Generation is a Certified B-corporation. We love that. You can read about their mission and other values on their website. You can’t buy anything from the Seventh Generation website but you can learn quite a bit about their products, ingredients, and goals.
What’s Your Impact? No plastic product coming from a company already really, really well versed in making products safe, non-toxic, and environmentally friendly in every way possible.
The Experience
Context: Prior to going even greener, we have used the normal Seventh Generation (powder and liquid), Tide, and Method. For stains, we are still using OxiClean’s stain remover here and there. We tried washing a load of delicate whites and a load of towels (separately! ☺) to test out the Seventh Generation Laundry Tablets.
Delicates
For delicates, we used cool water with the Seventh Generation laundry tablet in our top loading washer.
We put the tablet in the drum first, and let the water run a bit before loading clothing.
Clothes came out clean, with no fragrance, just clean smelling!
We had a medium load that we ran on the delicate cycle. which left part of the tablet undissolved in the drum.
Towels
For the towels, we used warm water (sorry, Seventh Generation!) on the heavy, normal cycle with the laundry tablets.
Like delicates, we put the tablet in the drum first and let the water fill up a bit before loading our towels in the drum.
Tablet was fully dissolved this time! We think the tablet remained undissolved under the delicate cycle due to the lower agitation setting.
The Cost
Context: We assumed that the average household of 4 will generate 7 loads of laundry per week or 365 loads per year! We will compare Seventh Generation’s laundry detergent tablets to a long list of other detergents like Meliora, Charlie’s, Cleancult, Dropps, and Sheets Laundry Club, as well as more common drugstore brands.
Money Report: Yikes. Unless it’s a bulk order of 800 Dropps (reviewed here), most pods and tablets are almost always going to be more expensive than their powdered counterparts due to their convenience (and production costs). But even then, the Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent Tablets are one of the most expensive, even when considering the 20% discount when you buy the bundle. We think it’s because there are only 36 tablets per tin.
The Good:
We are going to list just a few of the accolades here:
✔ Leaping Bunny Certified
✔ Non-toxic and biodegradable ingredients
✔ Dye-free, sulfate-free, fragrance-free, paraben-free, triclosan-free
✔ No animal ingredients and no animal testing
✔ Plastic-free - the container is steel which is one of the most recycled materials in the world
✔ Certified B Corp
✔ Cleaned our clothes and worked well for our larger load
The Bad:
✗ May not dissolve in smaller, delicate loads
✗ Pretty pricey option, even for a tablet
Our Recommendation:
We love, love, love Seventh Generation as a company and think they make great products. We are a hesitantly NOT a buy. Here is our reason: Seventh Generation Laundry Detergent Tablets only offers a tin of just 36 tablets, making it really expensive. For comparison, Dropps (our review) give you a bulk load of 800 pods to get to a price cut of ~30-60%. Plus, the tablet may not dissolve all the way in delicate loads. For homes with lower storage space and Seventh Generation fans (as well as a preference to tablets/pods versus powder), we see this as a good option.
We're on a mission to reduce our personal carbon footprint with small, hopefully easy, changes in our home to fight against climate change. This means we're looking for products that may be all natural, ideally zero waste, reusable or compostable -- while still being affordable!
