The Green Lab

The Green Lab, trading as The Green Lab Co, is a Dutch personal- and home-care company founded in 2021 [4]. It sells everyday washing products — hand soap, shampoo, shower foam and a facial cleanser — in dissolvable tablet form, which customers mix with tap water at home rather than buying pre-mixed liquids in plastic bottles. The company is registered in Heemstede, in the Netherlands, and remains active, with retail distribution across the Netherlands, Scandinavia and several other European markets.

The business was founded by entrepreneurs Jos Zonneveld and Maarten Drontmann [4]. Its central idea rests on a simple observation: liquid hand soap is roughly 95% water, and shipping that water in bottles is wasteful when consumers already have tap water at home [7].

According to the company, Zonneveld and Drontmann started The Green Lab Co after concluding that transporting bottled liquid soap — most of which is water — made little environmental sense. Their answer was a concentrated tablet that dissolves in tap water, removing both the freight weight of the water and the single-use plastic bottle. The first product, a "Refill & Remix" hand soap tablet, was designed to be used with aluminium bottles or a customer's own reusable container fitted with a foam pump. Early sales were run through the Dutch crowdfunding platform Crowd About Now [7].

The two founders are consistently named across the company's own account and independent trade coverage, though their reported ages differ slightly between sources — the brand's blog gives 39 and 38, while an earlier Dutch trade article lists 38 and 37 [4][7]. The difference reflects the different publication dates rather than any dispute over identity.

The Green Lab Co's range centres on tablets that fizz and dissolve in water. The launch product was the hand soap tablet, offered in a wide spread of botanical scents including bergamot, eucalyptus, lavender, chamomile, rosemary, vanilla and jasmine. The company later extended the tablet format into shampoo, shower foam and a facial cleanser, with dedicated children's formulas for the shampoo and shower foam lines. Alongside its personal-care products it also sells household cleaning tablets and baby wipes, which fall outside beauty.

The brand's marketing leans on a short slogan — "Why buy water? JUST FIZZ!" — and it describes its mission as "a cleaner future," aiming to make sustainable products available at a low price. The Green Lab Co has publicly called itself "the no. 1 tablet brand in the world," a self-description it has not backed with third-party verification [4].

A "Lab" section on the company's site frames its scents around the effect of smell on the brain, pairing individual fragrances with wellness claims — lavender described as calming and sleep-improving, eucalyptus as supporting respiratory function — and citing peer-reviewed journals in support [5]. These are presented as general aromatherapy claims about the ingredients rather than tested outcomes for the products themselves.

The company positions itself at the intersection of sustainability and affordability, stating that it wants to make products "as sustainable as possible" at "the lowest possible price" [2]. Its stated vision is "no unnecessary transportation of water and no plastic bottles." The Green Lab Co describes its packaging as 100% recyclable and its ingredients as fully biodegradable, and says it uses circular packaging made from recycled household waste. It is a co-signatory of the Dutch Plastic Pact, a national voluntary agreement on reducing plastic [2].

Beyond these brand-stated commitments, the packet records no independent vegan, cruelty-free or eco-label certification for the products.

The Green Lab Co was founded in 2021 and launched its first tablets through crowdfunding that year. In November 2023 the company expanded distribution to all 200 Holland & Barrett stores in the Netherlands, and in February 2024 it entered more than 100 Coop Norge stores in Norway [4]. In its home market its products are also stocked by supermarket chains including Albert Heijn, Jumbo and Dirk van den Broek. Across the Nordics its hand soap tablets are sold through the Life and Vita health-store chains and the Norwegian pharmacy Apotek 1, and the company lists Belgium, Spain and Germany among its markets.

The Green Lab Co is active. Its website is live, carrying a 2026 copyright, and it continues to expand its retail presence across the Netherlands and the Nordic countries. As a growth-stage company founded in 2021, its distribution is Europe-focused rather than global.

The company's registered location is the subject of a minor discrepancy in sources. The brand's own site gives its address as Heemstede, in the Netherlands [2], while its Facebook page and some aggregators list Amsterdam [9]. The Heemstede address, stated directly by the company, is treated here as the registered headquarters; the Amsterdam reference may reflect a broader metropolitan-area label.