Tide’s Evo Tiles Are Your New, Confused Take on the Tide Pod

Laundry is a $100 billion business. It can also be a real time-suck, what with all the washing, drying, and folding. Detergent company Tide has found great success with its Pods that allow you to dispense detergent from the washing machine without measuring and pouring liquid or powder. Now, the next evolution is a single-use washer called Tide Evo Tiles—a dry, fibrous, single-use tile that dissolves in cold water. It looks less appetizing 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 widely distributed throughout the US. Prices range from $5 to $20 per box, depending on the retailer, with prices averaging around 50 cents per tile.

“This is truly an engineering project,” said Marcello Puddu, Tide’s senior director of research and development. “There’s a lot of complex engineering and construction work that went into creating that one smooth tile that looks so simple.”

The main hope of Tide Evo is simple. Single-use soap dispensers are recommended for easy access to people who may have difficulty with the motor skills required to pour liquid soaps or powders. Evo Tiles have a slight ridge on the edges that makes it easy to remove from the box. Moving them is easy—just put them (one tile for normal loads, two for heavy duty) in the washer as close to the drain as possible, and toss the clothes on top.

After the tile breaks down, the ingredients work together to create a very high pH level in the fabric cleaning water. (Because of its high pH, ​​Tide Evo does not use lipase, an enzyme that breaks down stains and is a popular ingredient in some detergents.)

Evo tiles look like white, diamond-shaped Uncrustables. Instead of Tide Pod’s colorful liquid bags, these tiles are made from dry layers of woven cleaning fibers—about 10,000 of them, which Tide says is enough to stretch 15 miles, if you were so inclined. The result is a sheet of micro-braided yarns, woven together into six layers that stay in place on the shelf but break down quickly when wet, allowing for the separate release of stain and odor repellents, brighteners, and fresheners.

“The structure of the integrated product allows us to do that, because we can separate things that don’t like to be together,” said Puddu. “We can put an enzyme between the two layers so they don’t attack each other. You can’t do that easily with other matrices.”

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

Tide Evo tiles are specially designed to dissolve in cold water, the idea being that washing clothes without heating the water helps save energy. Packaging is also part of Tide’s environmental efforts. Unlike the plastic boxes Pods usually come in, the Tide Evo tiles are packaged in a recycled cardboard box approved 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 plastics used to make the casing around Tide Pods. PVA plastics have been the subject of much debate over whether the polymers used in the detergent casing can form microplastics when dissolved. They probably don’t, but the products are still being created within the wider plastic ecosystem and can lead to clogging of waterways if not managed properly.