Canadian company reinvents cleaning with iQ
The Smarter Cleaner that reduces plastic waste
Did you know the household cleaners in your cupboards and cabinets are actually only 5 per cent cleaning solution? The rest? You guessed it! Plain old water – the same stuff that comes out of your taps.
Now think for a second about the almost two billion bottles of household cleaner that North Americans consume every year, and imagine the enormous waste in producing, bottling and transporting all that water. Never mind the landfill impact of using and discarding all those single use, plastic spray bottles.
Canadians and Canadian companies are taking note and Planet People, one Canadian company, has made it their mission to find a solution for all that inefficiency and waste. They call it iQ, the Smarter Cleaner, and it’s a line of non-toxic household cleaners that pack all the cleaning concentrate you need into tiny plastic (recyclable) cartridges. Instead of using unnecessary water and extra plastic, consumers simply fill the spray bottle with their own tap water to the line already marked on the bottle, pop in iQ’s recyclable Refill® cartridges for an entire bottle of eco-friendly cleaner without any of the waste associated with it.
The system, which has been described as “Kool-Aid for Cleaning”, reduces plastic waste by 80 per cent, which helps avoid the carbon footprint associated with needless shipping of water. In fact, Planet People claims that 30 trucks filled with traditional cleaners can be reduced to just one due to the space efficiency of the concentrate cartridges.
Now concentrate cleaners have been done before, with varying degrees of success, but this one is different. For one thing, the cartridges require no measuring and no pouring; you just drop the self-deploy iQ Refill into the top of your prefilled spray bottle, twist on the trigger (the point and squeeze part at the top!) and presto, you’re ready to clean.
And those who steer clear of cleaning products with bleach, ammonia and other toxic ingredients will be glad to know that iQ cleaning solutions are made exclusively from safe ingredients like plant-based surfactants and sugar-based acids. Best of all, they’ve been third-party tested to perform as well or better than cleaners you’re used to seeing on supermarket shelves – “green” or traditional.
The iQ packaging innovation is turning some heads among environmental leaders, recently fetching Planet People the internationally coveted Global Green Award for “Best Green Design,” The award itself indicates that Planet People is on to something big in environmental responsibility from a packaging perspective.
The line consists of four cleaners: All-Purpose, Glass, Bathroom and Floor, each with its own distinct colour and fragrance (even the fragrances in iQ are VOC-free!). The product is sold at natural health food retailers across Canada, and launched at both Walmart and Loblaws in April. The “starter kit,” which includes a full bottle plus additional ReFill cartridge retail for approximately $5.49 and the ReFill cartridges retail for about $2.79. For more information you can check them out at www.iqclean.com.
2600 John Street, Unit 207, Markham, ON L3R 3W3 T: 905.475.5222 F: 905.475.6369
