Seepje

Seepje’s products are processed and packaged at a sheltered workshop in the Netherlands by people with mental and/​or physical disabilities. The peels of the Sapindus mukorossi fruit, also known as the super peels of Seepje, come from Nepal and India. Seepje pays a fair price for these peels. This has enabled them to achieve more than 40 fair annual incomes in Nepal by 2021. With this, the brand aims to create better working and living conditions and ensure more equality and fair opportunities.

Since 2019, the brand is officially a B Corp with a score of 84 points. This makes them part of a global movement that stands for a new definition of business success: profit and growth serve a better world. 

Seepje believes it is important to assist its partners when times are tough. You may have noticed the ​“Washing for Nepal” campaign the brand launched after the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. They heard that the workshop had partially collapsed and that their peel farmer and his people were suffering. Together with Seepje fans, they raised more than 30,000.00 euros within a week. With this they were able to provide 1,300 people with tents, medicine, water and food.

All Seepje products are at least 99% natural. Of vegetable or mineral origin, in other words. You will not find the following ingredients in Seepje products: petroleum-based cleaners, synthetic perfumes, synthetic dyes, microplastics and optical brighteners. 

So what is in the products? Mainly natural ingredients, that is. Seepje uses only 100% natural fragrances. The brand even uses local waste as raw material, such as Albert Heijn’s orange peels. The goal is to eventually offer only 100% natural products. The fabric softener is already 100% natural! However, there is palm oil in some products. The cultivation of this often burdens the environment and can involve deforestation. Fortunately, all palm oil in Seepje products has the RSPO label, which means it comes from sustainable forestry. 

When selecting and developing the natural ingredients, three things are high on the list: ingredient sourcing, your health and environmental impact. Often, regular detergents and polishes contain unnecessary fossil resources. By washing with Seepje, you save one plastic bag of petroleum per wash! Incredible isn’t it! 

On the packaging and product pages you will find all the ingredients. In addition, the Ecocert label that the brand has confirms that more than 99% of the ingredients are of natural origin.

The brand chooses packaging materials consciously and puts as little strain on the environment as possible. The bottles are made of 97% recycled HDPE plastic. By 2021, this will have saved them 114,316 kilos of plastic! The bottles are made from surrendered plastic waste, particularly in the municipality of Rotterdam. The plastic handed in is separated, after which a granulate (small grains) is made from it. These granules are melted down and mixed with 3% color additive. Ta-da, there’s the Seepje bottle! Even after use, the bottle can be recycled again. The sustainable design of the bottle has already won several international design awards, such as the Red Dot Design award.

The packaging of the peels is made of cardboard and the bag that holds the peels is made of biodegradable plastic, which consists of polylactic acid. This is extracted from renewable plant resources (such as sugarcane and corn starch).

The brand obtains Sapindus mukorossi peels and extract from Sapindus trees in Nepal and India. Production then takes place in the Netherlands. This makes the chain quite long. Fortunately, Seepje takes less energy to make, less energy to filter out of the wastewater and then the brand also compensates for their transportation in partnership with The GoodShipping Program!

The more natural an ingredient, the less the ingredient needs to be processed. That saves in CO2 emissions! In addition, all ingredients are filtered out of the water by water treatment plants. When using Seepje, the wastewater is significantly cleaner! So it takes less energy to purify the wastewater.

The super peels are transported from the port in India to the Netherlands using sustainable biofuel. These are second generation biofuels, made from waste or residual streams. Seepje purchases this biofuel through The GoodShipping Program, and they make it available to the shipping industry. Transport alone saves the brand some 1,106 kg of CO2 emissions annually. 

Seepje products contain no ingredients of animal origin. Yippee! Most are also certified by the Vegan Society. Even the 100% natural fabric softeners are free of animal fat. 

An exception applies to the hand soap and the dish soap ​“Freshly squeezed orange scent. Seepje uses leftover orange peels from Albert Heijn for these. It is possible that the suppliers of the orange peels use animal products. Because it cannot be excluded that they have been processed with preservatives or glazing agents based on animal ingredients (such as shellac), these hand soap and dish soap are not vegan (registered). Still, Seepje uses these orange peels because they believe they are adding value with this product by giving a locally available waste stream a second life. However, the substances found on the orange peels are completely safe. They are even approved in undiluted form by European legislation.

All products are also free of animal testing. The brand demands that the ingredients they use are animal-free and actively checks for this with their suppliers and in their supply chain. For cosmetics such as hand soap, this is required by law.

Seepje has introduced a Seepje Hand Soap refill for the new Seepje 500ml Hand Soap bottle. The refill contains all the active hand soap ingredients you’ve come to expect from the brand. Add water at home, shake, wait 30 minutes, shake again – and done! The refill dissolves into a full-sized Seepje hand soap. So you don’t have to buy a new bottle every time and you save a lot of CO2, every single package. Because the refill powder needs to be protected from moisture, the bag is made of paper, plastic and aluminum foil, so unfortunately it is not recyclable.

Did you know that for detergents and polishes, it is not mandatory to list all ingredients on the product packaging? As a result, as a consumer, you cannot immediately know whether your detergent, for example, contains synthetic fragrances and dyes. At Seepje, you can see a transparent list of ingredients per product on the product pages in the webshop. We at COSH! think that is great! 

Furthermore, Seepje is very transparent about where the production takes place and where the Sapindus mukorossi peels come from, but little information is given about the origin of the rest of the ingredients. 

The brand is very open about areas for improvement. Among other things, they want more direct contact with individual farmers and any cooperatives. That way they can be sure that the fair price they pay translates into a livable income for all concerned.