About ECOVER

Ecover is an international company active in the production of ecological cleaners. Founded in 1980 in Belgium,we have been a trendsetter from the very start: as a pioneering company, marketing a phosphate-free washing powder even before phosphates were branded as a problem.

Since then, Ecover, under the ownership of Jørgen Philip Sørensen CBE, has developed into the world’s largest producer of ecological cleaning products. Besides its headquarters outside of Antwerp, Belgium, Ecover has sites in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Switzerland, and our products are marketed in more than 20 countries.

Ecover’s progressive environmental policy is not only demonstrated by the products we sell, it is also an integral part of the company’s business operations. Acting in the spirit of the externally ISO 14001 standard, we have extended our environmental policy to all departments of the company, from production to marketing. One of the most striking results is the world’s first ecological factory. Built in October 1992, it has a grass (sedum) roof extending over more than 10,8002 feet. It received extensive press attention at the time, and draws more than a thousand visitors every year even now.

Ecover has received awards and recognition on many occasions for its special contributions and achievements in the field of environmentally friendly, sustainable development. Among various recognition, perhaps the most prestigious was being named to the Global 500 Roll of Honour of the United Nations Environment Program, in 1993.

In May 2008, Consumer Reports tested various cleaners. Ecover achieved the second best rating.

The Factory Water

While it's not unusal to see sustainable cleaning products lining the shelves, it is unique to also see a sustainable factory making those products.

We thought you might like to read up on our water treatment facility at our own factory.

Ecover has its own water treatment plant within the factory, which purifies all wastewater using a biological process. During the treatment process, bacteria (in activated sludge) break down the waste materials that enter the wastewater during our production operations.

Each day, wastewater is pumped for several hours into a water purification tank. As Ecover uses readily decomposable, non-toxic raw materials, the decomposition process is rapid and complete.

A daily sedimentation phase during the treatment process allows the bacteria to settle to the bottom of the tank, leaving clean water at the surface that can be pumped off and discharged. A portion of the bacterial mass that grows during the treatment process is also pumped off, dewatered, and pressed into sludge pellets. The sludge pellets are then disposed of separately as organic material that can be processed into organic fuels or soil improvement products.

Each day, around 8000 liters of water are treated and discharged using this process, and around 40 kg of dewatered sludge is produced. The quality of the discharged wastewater is very high – it is comparable to the quality of the water in the streams and rivers of the surrounding area (surface water quality), and in many cases even better.

The water treatment plant achieves a treatment efficiency of better than 99%, which is a remarkably good result for a biological process. That is primarily due to the good degradability of the products used during the production process. Each liter of wastewater contains approximately 300 ml of impurities prior to treatment, which is reduced to approximately 8 ml after treatment.

In this way, each day we eliminate an amount of impurities from our wastewater that is equivalent to the amount of wastewater impurities normally generated each day by around 6600 people.