eco.kid – readily biodegradable organic products

Why is eco.kid so focused on biodegradability?
Our personal care products are inevitably rinsed from the hair and down the drain. This means that they end up in our domestic wastewater and thereby they enter the aquatic environment. The environmental fate and effects of the chemicals that we use in all personal care, cleaning and/or cosmetic products are inextricably linked to their bio-degradation behavior, because biodegradation is the foremost mechanism for the ultimate elimination of these chemicals from the aquatic and terrestrial environments. Traditional hair and skin cleansers have a high eco-toxicity.

It is therefore important to us that a quick and complete biodegradation is achieved from all of the ingredients that we formulate with.

The environmental impact of chemicals lies mainly in their eco-toxicity. With hair and skin cleansers in particular, the eco-toxicity is relatively high because they are made of surfactants which have an aggressive surface effect on biological membranes. The word surfactant is derived from their function..”Surface Active Agents”.

When we evaluate our hair and skin cleansers biodegradability we must look primarily at our active cleansing ingredients to truly assess their compatibilities with the ecosystem. The primary actives in eco.kid shampoos are 100% pure essential oils... the secondary actives are sugar and coconut based foaming agents (alkyl polyglucoside). The essential oils speak for themselves. They come from nature and return to nature. They are unchanged along the way by us and therefore are received back by the planet as naturally as if they were still in the fruit,leaves or fiber from which they came.

eco.kid test research on the alkyl polygucosides indicates the following:

60% biodegradable within 10 days in a natural environment.
>90% biodegradability within 28 days in a natural environment.
>98% biodegradability within one week in sewage treatment plant conditions.
>99.5%-99.8% biodegradability within three weeks in sewage treatment plant conditions

Now that’s why eco.kid choose to use sulphate-free naturally derived ingredients!