Proctor and Gamble hopes that this is the future of laundry detergent
Lesson summary
Oh yeah, you heard correctly. We are doing an episode about laundry detergent. Let’s see if this one of the topics I regret choosing or not!
Hi there, I’m Jeff—and no, I don’t regret any of the topics, maybe a few of them have been questionable over the years , but they’re all good—anyway, this is Plain English, where we help you upgrade your English and possibly your life, with stories about current events and trending topics.
Tide evo: that’s the topic today. It’s the new generation of laundry pods. They’re dry, they’re white, and they’re not tempting to eat.
In the second half of the lesson, you’ll hear about how to use the English expression “morph into,” and this is a good one. You’re going to like this one. “Morph into,” that’s the second half of the lesson.
JR is the producer of Plain English, as always. He has uploaded the full lesson content to PlainEnglish.com/665. Let’s dive into today’s story.
Will new Tide tiles change our laundry habits?
South by Southwest, stylized as SXSW, is a film festival in Austin, Texas.
Or, rather it was a film festival in Austin, Texas. In the years since its founding in 1987, it has morphed into a wide-ranging festival of film, music, the arts, technology, and anything culturally relevant. It’s especially popular with influencers in the new economy.
So it was a strange place for Proctor & Gamble, an old-economy company if there ever was one, to announce a new laundry detergent.
Let’s pause the story for a second. In the 1880s—yes, we’re going back that far—in the 1880s, people washed their clothes with pulverized soap. Powder-based washing detergents were introduced in the early twentieth century. Proctor & Gamble started making Tide as a powder in 1946.
Fast forward a few decades to the 1970s. Liquid washing detergent became popular in Europe. Proctor & Gamble (or, P&G for short) introduced its own liquid detergent—it was called Era; you can still buy it today. A liquid version of Tide followed in 1984.
Then that was it for innovation in laundry detergent for a while. Oh, sure, they had new colors and new scents. But that was nothing compared to Tide Pods, which came out in 2012. These are small capsules of liquid detergent, wrapped in a plastic coating. The plastic coating dissolves in water, gradually releasing the detergent into the water. You grab one or two pods, throw them in the wash, and turn the machine on. It’s less of a sticky mess, there’s no need for a measuring cup, and you don’t have to buy a thick plastic jug every time.
In the U.S. today, 70 percent of laundry detergent sold is liquid; 24 percent comes in pods; and the remainder is powder.
Tide Pods were—in my opinion—the perfect consumer product. They worked. It was clean. It was easy. Throw one or two in there, turn it on—couldn’t be easier. So when I heard that Tide came out with a new product, a new way to get laundry detergent into your washing machine, I thought: why? We have powder. We have liquid. We have pods. And how could you possibly improve on the Tide Pod? What more do we really need?
But it turns out that there are some problems with detergent pods, problems I didn’t know about. The first problem is the plastic. The coating on the pods—the thing that holds the liquid inside—is a type of plastic called polyvinyl alcohol, or PVA. It dissolves in water. But just because it dissolves in water doesn’t mean the plastic goes away. The tiny particles of the plastic coating get flushed down the drain and into water treatment systems.
The wastewater treatment systems are supposed to break the plastic down so that it doesn’t wind up back in our water. The producers of the pods say the PVA is biodegradable. But that’s debatable: some studies say that up to 70 percent of the plastic in the coatings gets back into the environment.
Pods also come in plastic containers. Now, yes, they are an improvement over liquid, which comes in a thick plastic jug. But the pods either come in their own plastic cartons or in plastic refill bags. They just can’t sell liquid pods in a recycled paper carton. And I do remember having pangs of guilt with the plastic containers when I bought my pods.
Another problem is that the pods are dangerous if eaten—by a child or an adult. They look and feel like candy, and in fact when Tide Pods first came out, thousands of children ate them, thinking they were candy; many got seriously ill and six died.
This is unrelated to the 2018 internet challenge, in which people filmed themselves eating Tide Pods. There is an entire Wikipedia article—and not a short one either—called “Consumption of Tide Pods.”
So for those reasons, Tide Pods are perhaps not the perfect product I thought they were. And so now P&G is hoping to change our laundry habits again.
The new product is called Tide evo. They’re white, square, dry, and they fit in the palm of your hand. They look like little pillows, with a fabric-like casing around them. They’re the size of a Triscuit cracker. The company describes them as tiles. Each tile has six layers of fabric, and the fibers of the fabric are made of concentrated detergents.
The first versions are pure white. P&G’s technology allows them to print brand names on the top, but consumers said they preferred the simple white version—so the first iteration of Tide evo will be all white.
This design solves a few problems with the liquids. First, there’s no plastic in the tile. P&G is not the first company to introduce a plastic-free laundry pod, but they are by far the biggest company to do so.
Second, the new tiles don’t come in a plastic container. Since they’re dry, they can be shipped in a recycled paper carton, which can be recycled again later.
Next, they’re lighter. Lightweight products cost less to ship, and that’s important when consumers like to order household supplies online. Lighter products also require less fuel during shipping, another environmental benefit.
The tiles don’t look like candy, and so should not be a danger to children or impressionable TikTokers. Finally, the tiles are meant to be used in cold water, which can reduce consumers’ energy use.
Time will tell whether this is a fad or whether we’ll all soon be tossing pillow-like white tiles into the wash. P&G is testing the tiles in the U.S. state of Colorado before a global launch later this year.
Jeff’s take
I honestly saw this story—”there’s a new version of Tide”—and I thought, yawn. Who cares. But then I thought, Tide Pods made a big difference in my life. It’s true. I loved them. And now maybe this one will be an even bigger improvement, who knows.
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