A quick guide to reading past the label, so you can choose cleaning products with confidence.

"Biodegradable" is one of the most common words on eco-friendly cleaning products — and one of the most loosely used. Understanding what it actually means makes it much easier to tell a genuinely thoughtful product from one that's just marketing to you.

What biodegradable actually means

At its simplest, biodegradable means a substance can be broken down by microorganisms into simpler, natural components over time. For a cleaning product, that matters because of where it ends up: after it washes down the drain, it travels into the water system. Ingredients that break down more readily are less likely to linger in the environment than persistent ones.

Why the word alone isn't enough

Here's what most labels won't tell you: "biodegradable" on its own is a weak claim. Almost everything breaks down eventually — the real questions are how completely, and how long it takes. A product that takes decades to break down could still, technically, call itself biodegradable. That's why the word by itself doesn't tell you much.

So when you're comparing products, it's worth looking past the word to a few things that carry more weight:

Where the ingredients come from. Plant-derived ingredients start from renewable sources; petroleum-based ones don't. This is often a better signal than the word "biodegradable" itself.

Third-party certification. Independent standards — like the USDA's BioBased certification — are verified by someone other than the brand. A certification means more than a claim a company simply prints on its own bottle.

Specific over vague. "Made with 90% plant-based ingredients" tells you something. "Eco-friendly" and "all-natural," on their own, don't.

How we think about it

We'll be straight with you: we don't put a blanket "biodegradable" claim on our products, because a responsible version of that claim needs data to back it, not just a nice word on a label. What we do instead is start from plant-based, renewable ingredients, and — where a formula meets the USDA's standard for biobased content — show that certification on the product itself, so you don't have to take our word for it.

The goal isn't to win the label game. It's to make products we can honestly explain, and to give you what you need to choose well — from us, or from anyone.