four times

Toronto small business etee makes concentrated dishsoap (among other products) with natural products stored in a truly biodegradable pod, so instead of having these plastic bottles that every month or two need to be recycled, and which have an original plastic production cost, I can have a glass jar with a pump into which I put some water, add the concentrate, give it a shake, and I'm good to go.

The pods themselves are made with a form of wax that makes it so that I can accumulate the pods and eventually (with a wick) fabricate my own candles.

So I placed an order with them and was charged in USD. I emailed them about this. Their response is that 90% of their clientele are American, and that much of their suppliers charge in USD, so to streamline their costs they do all of their transactions in USD.

I took a look at the regular dish soap I get at my local grocer and compared it to the etee product. To make the comparison I took today's CDN equivalent of the US price for a bi-monthly subscription price and included shipping. To make the two products comparable I calculated a price per liter. The local grocer product is 5.56$ per litre while the etee product is 22.43$ per liter, roughly four times more expensive.

Making consumer choices like this to do things that are better for the environment fall again into a 'privileged' category - someone on a limited, fixed or low budget may not have this as an option. Ordering this every second month would cost around 27$, so monthly averaging to 13.50$. It is really hard to rationalize spending 13.50$ per month on dish soap; I'll have to think about this some more and try to see if I prioritize the environment enough to make this change.

Another possibility is I get the etee pods every third month, instead of every second, in which case the average monthly costs drops to 9$. I'll have to see how long each pod lasts to be able to figure this out, so I'll measure that closely once I get my first shipment.