Even by just doing laundry, you can make a positive impact

By Elcke Vels

We can’t escape them: doing laundry and other everyday household tasks. But even though we do them so often, we don’t always stop to think about how polluting, for example, an average wash can be. SaltyLama wants to change that. The start-up from Luxembourg built a sustainable marketplace for household products and has launched its first product, an eco-friendly laundry detergent in a biodegradable package. In this instalment of Start-up of the day, founder and CEO Ben Smith tells more about how the company is doing.

How are things going for SaltyLama?

“Things are going really well for us. Our online marketplace is live in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. Environmentally-conscious consumers can find our first product here: eco laundry detergent strips. This is a plastic free alternative to regular laundry strips. They come in fully biodegradable, compostable and lightweight packaging. In addition to this, the product is also hypo-allergenic. We have heard from several of our customers that skin problems started to disappear when they used our strips instead of the regular ones. Our strips can be bought on Amazon and Walmart as well. This is just our first product, though. We have a couple of new ones in the pipeline.”

Please tell us more about the new products.

“We will soon launch, amongst others, our own wool dryer balls. They separate your clothes in your tumble dryer and dry your clothes faster. Studies in energy usage have confirmed a reduction in dry time of up to 35 percent. In addition to saving energy, our felted wool balls can naturally soften clothes, eliminating the need for fabric softeners.”

Are sustainable products currently in high demand worldwide?

“Sustainability has become more important over the years. We have a massive issue in the world when it comes to single-use plastic and other pollutants. People are recognising this issue more and more. We can really contribute something positive. We’re not selling a fidget spinner, so to speak, or some other product that doesn’t actually solve anything.”

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What has been your biggest milestone so far?

“So many great things have happened. But if I had to choose one, I would say it helped us enormously that we closed our first funding round. We also received a grant from the Luxembourg government and as far as we are ware of, we were the only one in our classification that was chosen for this award. With this financial support, we were able to expand our range and evolve the packaging of our products taking out roughly 75 percent of the ink utalised in production. This seperates us further from our competition as our packaging will biodegrade even faster in the natural environment. I’m looking forward to that.” 

Did you encounter some challenges as well?

“Operating a multinational corporation, where each country has its own separate rules and regulations certainly taught us a lot and has provided us with a more comprehensive roadmap as we look to the future. Even though we didn’t have major issues, there were definitely some hurdles. For example, paying for certain things that we didn’t initially anticipate ranging from trademarks, costs relating to laundry detergent regulations and the various packaging and safety data disclosures that follow, to various systems and integrations to ultimately streamline our operations. But then, after a while good things happen again, like the government grant. And that gave us an indication that we were on the right track.”

What is your ultimate goal?

“In the end, we want to make a massive impact on the world. And in order to do that, we need to be a massive company ourselves. So in five years from now, our goal is to become a billion dollar company. Based on our business plan and financial model, we believe this to be an ambitious, yet achievable goal and we’re going to do our utmost to make it happen.”