November 3, 2019

by drplasticpicker.com

This is the first post (#1) in hopefully an ongoing series. Part of the purpose of this personal plastic picking blog, is like the personal finance blogs, is that it makes me accountable for my own stewardship of this earth as a mother and a pediatrician to 2000 children. Part of the way to reduce ocean plastic pollution is to advocate for less plastic in general and more use of post-consumer recycled plastic content. So here is the Post #1: Laundry Detergent companies!

Having just returned from the AAP New Orleans 2019 https://drplasticpicker.com/drplasticpicker-goes-to-the-aap-national-conference-in-new-orleans-and-tries-to-use-less-plastic, the Exhibit halls were definitely battleground zero for certain companies duking it out for market share. For the large market for babies, it is which laundry detergent should sensitive skin babies (aka eczema babies) use? What I wanted to do was inject the question of what about their packaging? So when I went to both booths, I looked at their bottles and noted it. That is it. It was so busy at the conference, I did not have time to do more.

But now that I am home, I have Facebook and time. So commenting as myself I wrote the following messages to ALL FREE AND CLEAR and DREFT. I did comment as myself, so that they knew I was a real person.

ALL FREE AND CLEAR

Hello! I am a pediatrician and I saw your exhibit at the AAP New Orleans exhibition hall. I did like your product and it’s benefit to my patients with eczema but I was wondering if there was any plans to change the amount of recycled plastic content in your all free and clear 46.5 oz bottles? I would more likely recommend All Free & Clear if the bottle was packaged in more eco-friendly bottles with post-consumer packaging. The Dreft bottles I believe are made partially from post-consumer plastic. Thank you for considering!

DREFT

Hello! I am a pediatrician and I saw your booth at the AAP New Orleans Exhibit. I am still considering which product to recommend , but I wanted to let you know that I loved that the DREFT bottles come in more post-consumer recycled plastic content. It makes me want to recommend DREFT more because more post-consumer recycled plastic content is better for the world and children is general. Thank you for doing that for the earth!

That is my consumer advocacy for the week! I thought I was quite professional and polite. I will update this post if either company replies. Exercising my power as a consumer!

***UPDATE: Dear readers I got a reply from DREFT! “We’re so glad to hear this, Vi! The environment is very important to us at Dreft. We hope you visit xxx for more information on the steps we’re taking ” And then they provided a link to The Alliance to End Plastic Waste https://endplasticwaste.org This is legitamate group! Thank you DREFT! I replied to them ” Thank you so much for your reply! I really appreciate your quick response and your efforts on the environment. Even today I had a conversation with a family with eczema and dreft versus all, and the way you use post-consumer plastic came up.” And then I put a link to this blog!