Tide’s Evo Tiles Are a Fresh, Overengineered Take on the Tide Pod

Laundry is a $100 billion business. It can also be a real mess in real time, what with all the washing, drying, and folding. Detergent company Tide has had great success with its pods that allow you to put detergent directly into a washing machine without having to measure and pour liquid or powder. Today, the next evolution is a comprehensively designed single-use detergent called Tide Evo Tiles, a dry, fibrous, single-use tile that can dissolve in cold water. It looks a lot less tasty than the bright, colorful Tide Pods, so hopefully fewer people will try to eat this one.

Tide Evo tiles have been in product development for over a decade. After spending a year in test markets, Tide and its parent company, Procter & Gamble, announced last week that Evo Tiles are now being rolled out more widely in the United States. Prices range from $5 to $20 per box, depending on the retailer, with pricing around 50 cents per tile.

“It’s truly a feat of engineering,” says Marcello Puddu, Tide’s senior director of research and development. “A lot of very complex engineering and formulation work went into creating this unique and elegant tile that appears relatively simple.”

The main hope for Tide Evo is simplicity. Single-use detergent pods are praised for being more accessible to people who may have difficulty with the motor skills needed to pour liquid soap or powders. The Evo tiles have a small ridge on the edges which makes them easier to remove from the box. Deploying them is easy: Just place them (one tile for regular loads, two for heavy loads) in the washer as close as possible to where the water comes out, then throw the fabrics on top.

Once the tile is broken, the ingredients work together to create a very high pH in the water that cleans the fabrics. (Due to its high pH, ​​Tide Evo does not use lipase, an enzyme that breaks down stains and is a popular ingredient in other detergents.)

Evo tiles look like diamond-shaped white inlays. Instead of the colorful liquid packets of a Tide Pod, these tiles are made of dry layers of interwoven detergent fibers — about 10,000 of them, which Tide says is enough to stretch for 15 miles, if you’re inclined to do such a thing. The result is a looped network of tiny fibers, woven together in six layers that stay in place when on the shelf but break down quickly when wet, allowing separate releases of stain and odor-fighting products, lighteners and deodorizers.

“The structure of an assembled product allows us to do this, because we can separate elements that don’t like to be together,” Puddu explains. “We can put an enzyme between two layers so the two don’t attack each other. You can’t really do that that easily in other matrices.”

The goal is to combine the benefits of Tide Pods and laundry sheets and create something that contains enough detergent to sufficiently clean a load of laundry while still being lightweight and able to dissolve quickly. And, as Tide is keen to point out, it also makes things more eco-friendly.

Tide Evo tiles are specially designed to dissolve in cold water, the idea being that washing fabrics without having to heat the water saves energy. Packaging is also part of Tide’s eco-friendly efforts. Unlike the plastic boxes usually found in Pods, Tide Evo tiles are packaged in a recyclable cardboard box certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

However, Tide Evo uses polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) plastics to help the fibrous structure hold together. These are the same type of plastic used to form the casing around the Tide Pods. PVA plastics have been the subject of much debate over whether the polymers used in detergent packaging can create microplastics when dissolved. This is probably not the case, but the products are still created within the larger plastic ecosystem and can lead to blocked waterways if not handled properly.