Why Are We Shipping Water Across the World?
Take a look at the cleaning products sitting under your sink. Whether it is an all purpose spray, a window cleaner, or a bottle of liquid laundry detergent, they all share one surprising and environmentally costly characteristic >
Often 95% + of what is inside those heavy plastic bottles is just tap water.
While the focus on sustainable cleaning often centres around avoiding harsh chemicals and single use plastics, there is a massive logistical problem that rarely makes the headlines. The conventional cleaning industry is built on manufacturing, packaging, and shipping millions of tonnes of water around the world, generating a staggering and entirely avoidable carbon footprint.
The Weight of Water (1g = 1ml :-)
Water is incredibly heavy. A standard 500ml spray bottle of all purpose cleaner weighs roughly 500 grams just from the liquid alone, before you factor in the bottle itself. Yet the active cleaning ingredients, the surfactants and minerals that actually cut through grease and grime, typically make up less than 5% of that total weight, with the pill system, 500ml of all purpose cleaner is produced with 1 3,2g pill (when diluted around around 0,64% of solid matter vs water) [1].
When you buy a conventional liquid cleaner, you are essentially paying a premium to have water packaged in a plastic bottle, loaded onto a pallet, driven in a heavy goods vehicle to a distribution center, and then shipped across the world to a store near you. At every stage of that journey, the unnecessary water weight requires more fuel to transport. More fuel means more carbon emissions, and is waste of money also
The Numbers in Perspective
To understand the scale of the problem, consider this direct comparison:
One n.a.k.e.d pill weighs ~3.2 grams and measures 18mm x 8mm. It fits through the neck of any standard spray bottle. When dissolved in 500ml of your own tap water at home, it produces exactly the same volume of ready to use cleaner as that heavy conventional bottle.
The difference is that instead of shipping 550 grams of product from a factory across the world to your door, we ship ~3.2 grams. That is a weight reduction of over 99%.
The True Environmental Impact
The environmental cost of the conventional model is vast. Industry lifecycle analyses consistently show that concentrated cleaning formats reduce transportation related carbon emissions by up to 90% compared to ready to use liquid equivalents [1]. When you factor in manufacturing, packaging, and end of life disposal, the total environmental impact of conventional liquid cleaners is far larger than most people realise.
The production of heavy plastic bottles, the energy intensive mixing and filling processes, the warehouse space, the freight miles, all of it exists to deliver something you already have flowing from your kitchen tap.
you may not see the scale of the waste bottle by bottle, but try imagining 1000 bottles or 100,000, disposable spray bottles are being used in most businesses and most homes, most days of the week
A Smarter Way to Clean
The solution to this logistical problem is remarkably simple: stop shipping water.
This is the foundation of n.a.k.e.d pills. We completely removed water from the supply chain. Our active, plant based cleaning ingredients are compressed into a compact ~3.2 gram pill. The dilution ratio is 1 to 156 (pill to water), meaning less than 1% of what ends up in your spray bottle is the pill itself. The rest is water taken locally at your home or work place [2].
The environmental benefits are immediate. Our pills weigh a fraction of an ounce, so the fuel required to transport them is drastically lower than shipping a 500 gram bottle of liquid. Our packaging is minimal and plastic free. And because you reuse your own spray bottle, you eliminate single use plastic waste entirely.
When your bottle is empty, you do not throw it away and order another heavy bottle of liquid from a warehouse on the other side of the world. You drop in a new pill, fill it from your tap, and you are ready to clean again in 30 minutes.
It is a small shift in how you buy your household essentials. But when multiplied across thousands of households, the reduction in carbon emissions and plastic waste is significant. There is no good reason to keep shipping water across the world.
References
[1] The Carbon Footprint of Cleaning Products: Why We’re Shipping Water Across the Country. Green Llama Clean. Retrieved from https://greenllamaclean.com/blogs/news/carbon-footprint-cleaning-products-shipping-water
[2] Safety and Product Information. n.a.k.e.d pills. Retrieved from https://www.nakedpills.com/pages/safety