Grove Collaborative Sees Plastic Footprint Decrease 37 Percent

San Francisco-based Grove Collaborative recently released its fourth sustainability report for 2022-2023.

This report showcases the company's success in sustainability over the past year and introduces new company initiatives. The report also lays out the goals for the household cleaner and beauty product retailer.

One of the key takeaways from the report is that, since 2017, Grove customers have helped avoid or collect over 20 million pounds of plastic through the purchases of plastic-reducing Grove Co. and Peach Not Plastic products. Since 2020, the company has been able to reduce its plastic footprint by 1.9 million pounds, down from 5.1 million pounds to approximately 3.2 million pounds total plastic footprint in 2022, a 37 percent decrease.

In 2022, 16 percent of products sold by Grove were refillable or reusable. This is up 3 percent from its 13 percent total in 2021. Grove is working to increase its output of refillable or reusable products while reducing single-use plastics.

“We know that plastic permeates every part of our daily lives, but the future is up to us to decide. Our goals around sustainability (and especially plastic) shape how we do our jobs every day, and how we create a brand that customers rely on for the best available solutions that align with their values of sustainability, safety, and of course —efficacy,” said Stuart Landesberg, co-founder & CEO of Grove Collaborative.

“We’ve also seen the impact of our brand on the industry. Across sectors, we are seeing more concentrated options than ever before, and our Plastic Working Group has helped over one hundred companies advance their sustainable packaging goals.”

For its Beyond Plastic initiative, Grove plans to solve the plastic crisis for home and personal care products. The report reiterates that the company is working hard to remove plastic from everything they make and sell. After 2022, Grove’s plastic metrics with the Grove Co. brands were at 71 percent Beyond Plastic by revenue and 76 percent by percent of SKUs sold.

Grove is helping customers identify which products in their brands contain plastics and which are plastic free using a badge system for Beyond Plastics. There are three badges that identify if a product is either 100 percent plastic-free, doesn’t contain single-use plastic, or is 95 percent+ plastic-free. In 2022, 100 percent plastic-free products made up 24p percent of net revenue with the percent of SKUs sold totaling 17 percent for the plastic-free products.

Outside of plastic, the company is partnering with The Nature Conservancy to support Indigenous-led conservation across 2 million acres in the Tongass Rainforest of Southeast Alaska. Between 2018 and 2022, Grove achieved its goal of planting 1 million trees in the U.S through its “tree positive” Grove Co. paper line.

Another way Grove has been helping the environment is through its efforts to remove nature-bound plastic for each ounce of plastic it sells. Since 2020, the company has collected 12.7 million pounds of plastic from the ocean and nature, following through with its plastic neutrality commitment.

In the report, Grove goes on to say it's aiming to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.