NEW YORK—Ireland founded Easydry has achieved a global first as the first disposable towel company to receive B-Corp certification. Certification required testing Easydry on their social and environmental performance and the company’s ability to show full transparency on factors from employee benefits and charitable giving to supply chain practices and input materials. Easydry’s global expansion and their U.S. operations in New York are supported by Enterprise Ireland, the Irish trade and innovation agency.
CEO and founder Anne Butterly says: “I am so proud that Easydry has become a certified B Corp. I launched Easydry almost 20 years ago with sustainability at its heart. Achieving B Corp certification is a fantastic validation of what we do and what we believe in. It fits perfectly with the Easydry mission and vision.”
Easydry was founded 15 years ago with the mission to be a business that puts purpose over profit. From the outset, sustainability has been a priority for the company. While disposable may not be the first word that comes to mind when it comes to sustainability, the carbon footprint of materials that go into creating and maintaining traditional towels far outweighs that of Easydry’s 100 percent biodegradable towel. Aside from being fully biodegradable and compostable, Easydry towels are two to three times more absorbent than cotton towels and can absorb up to 10 times their weight in moisture. By switching to Easydry towels, the salon sector in the United States could save 15,000 gallons of water per salon. With approximately 200,000 hair salons in the United States this could lead to a savings of 3 billion gallons of water annually.
Easydry Earns High Score
Certified B Corporations, or B Corps, are companies that have proven to show the highest standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability. For the last year, Easydry has been working with B Corp to achieve certification—ensuring full transparency throughout their corporate practices and supply chain. To qualify, a company must score an 80 or higher throughout their B Impact Assessment (BIA) with the average company’s score being around 50. Easydry surpassed the requirement by achieving a score of 98.7—making it the 2nd highest scoring B Corporation in Ireland.
Easydry’s Environmental Report includes an independent Life Cycle Analysis commissioned by Easydry that compares their eco-friendly, disposable towels with cotton ones. The report includes a comparison of water usage, carbon emissions, the use of toxic chemicals and the use of land that would otherwise be suitable for crop cultivation.
Key results from the Life Cycle Analysis include:
- Easydry fiber production uses 10 to 20 times less water than cotton production.
- Easydry uses approximately 42 gallons of water to produce 1pound of fiber compared to 1,850 to 7,660 gallons of water required per one pound of cotton fiber for traditional towels.
- No scientific evidence exists to support the belief that cotton is ecologically superior to industrially produced cellulose fibers.
- “Cotton has one of the greatest environmental impacts of all agricultural commodities during its processing,” according to the WWF.
- “Modern man-made cellulose fibers have a clear potential in reducing the environmental impacts over cotton and petrochemical synthetic fibers,” according to the University of Utrecht.
“It’s always a pleasure working with sustainability and purpose driven companies like Easydry,” says Anderson Graves, Vice President of Consumer Retail for Enterprise Ireland. “This certification is only the most recent in a wave of sustainability related achievements for the company—from ten years of FSC certification for their entire supply chain, to achieving seedling certification with their products being suitable for both industrial and at home composting—Easydry’s commitment to minimizing their carbon footprint is one we should all admire.”
Already established as the pioneers of disposable towels within the professional hairdressing, barber, and beauty industry, Easydry has proven themselves across the fitness, hospitality, and healthcare industries with their compostable gowns, eco-friendly capes, and bed rolls. Easydry towels can be found in your local CVS and are used by industry leaders such as L’Oréal, Redken, Matrix, Aveda, KAO/Goldwell and Henry Schein. For more information on Easydry’s products visit: https://www.Easydry.com/.
