“Cinderella’s Organic Housekeeping” Launches Cleaning Products in Glass

GPI recently sat down to speak with Mark Cochrane & Yvonne Schoff of Cinderella’s Organic Housekeeping, a new company that offers fair trade, organic, eco-friendly cleaning products, all of which are packaged in glass. Cinderella’s is proud to offer consumers the first glass spray bottle in the cleaning industry complimented by glass concentrate refill bottles.

Listen to the podcast or Read the transcript

GPI: GPI recently sat down to speak with Mark Cochrane & Yvonne Schoff of Cinderella’s Organic Housekeeping, a new company that offers fair trade, organic, eco-friendly cleaning products, all of which are packaged in glass. Cinderella’s is proud to offer consumers the first glass spray bottle in the cleaning industry complimented by glass concentrate refill bottles.

GPI: Tell us about your new cleaning line, “Cinderella’s Organic Housekeeping”.

Mark: It’s the purest all-purpose cleaner on the market. It’s made with organic oils and aromatherapy-grade essential oils. As far as we know, it’s the only [brand] packaged in glass; it’s the first glass spray bottle in the cleaning industry. And, it’s the true all-purpose cleaner. Besides manufacturing this product, Yvonne and I also run a housekeeping service, and this is the only product that we use in the whole service. We use it on everything: windows, mirrors, stainless steel and chrome, all different kinds of floors and countertops, bathtubs, toilets, sinks, and it’s even pure enough that we use it on our pets at home.

GPI: Great. So, it’s multipurpose…

Mark: Yeah. It’s an all-purpose cleaner. It’s the only one you need in your home.

GPI: What motivated you to start an organic cleaning brand?

Yvonne: Well, Kristen, I was working in a hotel here in Nelson, [British Columbia], and a lot of us cleaners were getting skin rashes and blisters on our skin, cracking, and some girls were even having problems with their lungs. We found out it was from the cleaners that we were using. There are so many different chemicals that were involved and one of them was actually formalin, which is actually formaldehyde, and it’s used in a lot of commercial cleaners that are not organic. I started looking at it and learning these things and decided that I didn’t want to clean with chemicals anymore, and so Mark and I started developing what turned out to be Cinderella’s Organic Housekeeping all-purpose cleaner. And, that’s how it started.

GPI: You might be the first cleaning brand to package in glass bottles. Why did you choose glass over alternative packaging materials?

Mark: There are a few reasons. Big on the list is the environment. You look at the Great Pacific Gyre and you can see that all of the plastic we ever created is still existing here on the planet and a large portion of that is ending up in our oceans. Then the fish are eating the plastic that gets in the oceans and we’re eating the fish, so [plastic] seems like a product that isn’t good for anyone. So, that was one of the big things. But then also, for the people who use it, no matter how good your product is, if it’s packaged in plastic then that plastic is going to degrade into the product and you’re going to be spraying it around your house and you’re going to be breathing it in. Also, on top of that, it helps to maintain the integrities of our oils because we use really high quality oils in our product. And, when we first started out we were forced to package in a plastic spray bottle for the first little while and within a few weeks, the scent of the essential oils was completely gone. So, it just helps to maintain the integrity of our product.

GPI: How have consumers responded to your products and to the packaging? Do customers refill the bottles, recycle them or both?

Mark: People have absolutely loved it and we’ve been blown away by the response. When we do our in-store demos, to see the look on people’s faces when they realize it’s a glass spray bottle, they’re almost in shock; it’s quite entertaining. As far as recycling them, with our product, we basically sell the spray bottle, which can be used forever. You just keep that and you can keep refilling it. And then we have our concentrate bottle that you keep refilling the spray bottle with. Instead of recycling it, we get the people to take the bottles back to the stores where it’s for sale. Then we pick up the bottles and we’re able to reuse them again.

GPI: Where is the Cinderella brand currently available?

Mark: Right now we’re mostly in Alberta and British Columbia, although we just got our website up and running this last week and starting in the next couple of days, people will be able to order it online and we’ll be shipping it all over North America.

GPI: That’s great news.

Mark: Yeah. We’re really excited about it.

GPI: What’s on the horizon for “Cinderella’s Organic Housekeeping”? What can consumers look for in the future?

Yvonne: In the future, we’re coming out with an unscented and that’s for people who have sensitivities to aromas; we’ve had a lot of people ask for an unscented. We’re also coming out with a new scent. We’re thinking about a lemongrass or something a little bit spicy and a little bit different. As far as the company goes, we’d like to develop a laundry soap and a dish detergent, also packaged in glass. For manufacturing, we’d like to reduce our carbon footprint even more by coming out with micro-factories, so we’re not spending a lot of money and energy delivering the products to stores. We’d like to set up little micro-factories in the areas that we’re selling in. We’d like to also be using bio-fuel instead of burning fossil fuels so that we can further reduce our carbon footprint.

GPI: We just spoke with Mark Cochrane & Yvonne Schoff of Cinderella’s Organic Housekeeping. For more information about Cinderella’s, please visit www.cinderellasorganic.com. I’m Kristen Taylor with this month’s “Inside Glass Packaging” from The Glass Packaging Institute.