Seventh Generation Zero Plastic Toilet Bowl Cleaner Powder Review | Zero Waste, Biodegradable Toilet Bowl Cleaner
The Top Line: BUY. We love Seventh Generation as a company and love many of their great products — especially the toilet cleaning powder. It is not the cheapest option, but we think may last longer than 2x liquid cleaners. Also, we look forward to Seventh Generation’s upcoming refills for their products since the price will probably come down even further, while keeping the same canister.
The Breakdown:
Cost & Products: $6.99 for 14oz canister of Toilet Bowl Cleaner Powder or $46.95 for the Zero Plastic Complete Bundle (saving 20% by the bundle) via the Grove Collaborative Shop
How ‘Clean’ Is This? Compared to other toilet bowl cleaners that smell like they could take the paint off of a car — this one is bleach free and has relatively few ingredients that are mainly mineral-based. Plus, we’ve heard of each one. There is SLS, but for a toilet bowl, we definitely let this slide!
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.
Many of our tins showed up pretty banged up and dented — and when we reached out to Grove Collaborative to let them know what happened, they promptly gave us store credit for our bundle purchase. A+ since we weren’t even asking for that.
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.
FYI: Seventh Generation is working on refills for their canisters, including the Bathroom Powder.
What’s Your Impact? No plastic product coming from a company already really, really well-versed in making environmentally friendly products in every way possible.
The Experience
What we typically use: We have used Seventh Generation’s liquid toilet bowl cleaner as well as Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day and J.R. Watkin’s toilet bowl cleaner. We were excited for this plastic-free toilet bowl cleaning option!
Directly sprinkle the toilet water in the bowl with the product — it was like a controlled science experiment from grade school. It started foaming immediately!
We let it sit for about 60 seconds (can leave for longer on tougher stains) and then brushed like normal.
It worked! Cleaned our toilet bowl like any other gel cleaner would have.
Smell: technically no fragrance but it smells just like the original Seventh Generation toilet bowl cleaner.
The Cost
We compared the Seventh Generation Toilet Bowl Cleaning Powder to typical drugstore brands like Clorox and Lysol as well as the greener crew like Mrs. Meyer’s, Green Shield, and Method. We think the powder lasts at least 2x longer, which means 1oz of dry powder = 2oz of liquid toilet cleaner. Given how little we put in the toilet, we think it may be even longer. For the annual calculation, we assume you use 1oz of cleaner per week, each week, and that you have 2 bathrooms.
*We assumed that each ounce of powder toilet cleaner is equivalent to 2 ounces of liquid toilet bowl cleaner
Money Report: The Seventh Generation toilet cleaning powder is in the middle of the pack, if you assume that it lasts you twice as long. It is a bit more expensive than the liquid version, as well as the non-green options like Clorox or Lysol.
The Good:
✔ Leaping Bunny Certified, biodegradable ingredients that are reasonably recognizable
✔ Plastic-free - the container is steel which is one of the most recycled materials in the world
✔ Certified B Corp
✔ Septic tank safe and bleach-free toilet cleaner
✔ We like the foaming action!
✔ Cleans toilet well
✔ Familiar Seventh Generation toilet cleaner smell
✔ Middle of the pack in terms of price — may be even cheaper if it lasts even longer than 2x liquid toilet cleaners or if the price of future refills is even less!
The Bad:
✗ Um…none really.. other than it isn’t cheaper than drugstore brands that have tons of chemicals and bleach
Our Recommendation:
We love Seventh Generation as a company and love many of their great products — especially the toilet cleaning powder. It is not the cheapest option, but we think may last longer than 2x liquid cleaners. Also, we look forward to Seventh Generation’s upcoming refills for their products since the price will probably come down even further, while keeping the same canister.
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!
