"We believe the future of sustainability is in showing a total commitment to recycling and being environmentally friendly."
Nick Winstone, Co Founder and MD of InnuScience UK
Perception in the cleaning industry is that to enhance product quality, and specifically, to ensure the greenest products possible, product costs will need to increase. This is a major challenge against an industry backdrop that is dominated by diminishing budgets and the need to reduce costs.
InnuScience – as a pioneering and established manufacturer of biotechnological cleaning products - understands this balance and prides itself on being able to demonstrate real life performance improvement and exceeding industry standards, whilst actually reducing the end-user’s chemical product spend.
There is a lot of hype and ‘green washing’ in the industry, in terms of what constitutes a ‘green’ or sustainable product – most of which is completely misleading. Quite simply, it comes down to what impact the product has on its people and the planet, and our stringent biodegradability benchmark, and strict Enviro Performance Standards underpin the green strength of our products, along with third party certifications from EU Ecolabel and N American Ecologo.
InnuScience, has placed a great emphasis on developing environmentally-friendly products and is committed to being an industry leader in the field of sustainable plastics. For years it has paved the way in plastic reduction, with its industry leading dilutions of 1:150 to 1:300 for most products, meaning one litre of InnuScience concentrate can make 150 to 300 litres of in use product.
We have a mission to shape the cleaning industry, one of these ways is through the use of recyclable plastics and particularly Post-Consumer Recycled Plastic (PCR). Already all our plastic bottles are made of sustainable plastic and we insist on all of our products possessing ultimate biodegradability of 99.99 per cent – according to OECD test 301 - being standard. Furthermore, all our products are either Ecologo or Ecolabel certified.
Our ‘family’ of sustainable packaging now comprises:
- Recyled HDPE Material: Recycled High-density polyethylene (HDPE) or polyethylene high-density (PEHD) is a thermoplastic polymer produced from the monomer ethylene, which InnuScience has discovered is a great material for the manufacture of its reusable trigger bottles.
- Bio Based Material: The material used for the bottles (Braskem Green PE) is Bio Based (Plant-based from sugar cane) and the Ethanol is obtained from sugar cane and polymerized to polyethylene. This polyethylene is then identical to fossil polyethylene. It has a negative CO2 footprint and is 100 per cent recyclable.
- PCR Material: Post-consumer recycled (PCR) resin is the recycled product of waste created by consumers before the plastic waste is turned into resin. This material is strong and able to support the structure and weight of InnuScience’s 750ml Trigger, one litre descaler and two-and-a-half and five litre concentrated products.
InnuScience sees this as the start of the sustainable packaging journey and is currently exploring a number of Zero waste packaging options.
We are proud to be leading the way in sustainable packaging by having all of our packaging now in either recycled or bio-plastics. It’s easy to have one or two lines but to have moved everything across has been a real challenge that our team has risen to, resulting in us now leading the way in terms of sustainable products in and out of the bottle.
We believe the future of sustainability is in showing a total commitment to recycling and being environmentally friendly. Currently we have pilot projects to look at how we can optimize closed loop recycling, as well as getting used bottles back to us for rebottling.
Technology has the ability to transform the way we clean and the way we control the budgets around cleaning product spend. By monitoring our customer spend on cleaning products we can ensure that savings are being delivered and that product usage is optimal per customer site.
InnuScience is the youngest and fastest-growing of the top 15 manufacturers in the UK, supplying biotechnology-based cleaning products to the Facilities Management, Building, Hospitality and Care Sectors.
The InnuScience UK range of professional cleaning products cover the needs of the most prestigious public sectors, education, restaurants, hotels, stations, airports, healthcare and retail contracts, and include cleaners and degreasers, maintenance products, industrial cleaners, odour eliminators, laundry products and floor care.
