2 Harmful Ingredients to Look for in Your Laundry Detergent (and easy ways to avoid them)
A water treatment company in the Netherlands has written extensively about the impact of detergent on the environment, the main concern being its impact on aquatic life: certain ingredients in laundry detergent being lethal for fish and their eggs, disrupting the ecosystem. The most dangerous components of laundry detergent for aquatic life are the sodium silicate solution used in many detergents along phosphates (banned in over a dozen states in the United States), because it takes oxygen away from aquatic life.
So, check your detergent bottle, especially for two ingredients: sodium silicate solution and phosphates. If you cannot find a comprehensive list of ingredients on the bottle, look for them on the manufacturer’s website.
BUT there are easier routes to laundry detergent—ones that do not leave you analyzing an ingredient list, and are more cost-effective as well (win-win)!
Here are two options that can help you ensure that your detergent is A-OK:
Make your own detergent:
This is one that I should do more, but finding the ingredients and setting up in the kitchen with the blender is just not really where I’m at in life right now (ahem, lazy and okay with it), although I have used this recipe in the past. If mixing something up in the kitchen is your thing, this will be a breeze:
Ingredients:
-1 bar of Fels Naptha (you can get this on Amazon)
-1 cup of 20 Mul Team Borax
-1 cup of Arm & Hammer “super washing soda”
-essential oils for smell (optional)
You can get all of these ingredients for under $25.00 on Amazon and one batch can easily last you 100 loads (maybe more!) and you are left with the majority of the ingredients to make multiple batches.
Directions:
1. Heat up 3 and a half cups of water
2. Grate or cut the Fels Naptha bar into small pieces
3. Add the grated pieces to the hot (almost boiling) water and stir until it is melted
4. Add one cup of washing soda and one cup of borax and stir over heat for 5-10 minutes
5. Once the mixture has mostly cooled, throw it into the blender (this is where you can add the essential oils). If it doesn’t seem thick enough, leave it for a few hours and re-blend it.
6. Pour it into mason jars and use 1 tablespoon for each load of laundry
2. Purchase eco-friendly detergents
If you’re like me and mixing anything together that’s more than two ingredients gives you a minor panic attack (yes, I really am that lazy), then try detergent strips which are a great eco-friendly detergent alternative.
-Tru Earth: When I ran out of my regular laundry detergent (I always recommend using up what you have), I went looking for a more eco-friendly alternative that didn’t leave me throwing away the bottle at the end. I found these Tru Earth Eco-Strips that advertise themselves as being both good for sensitive skin and the environment. The best part for me is that the completely dissolve in the washer and the packaging is very minimal—much less of a footprint than the detergent bottles I have used in the past.
There are plenty of other detergent strips out there (for example: Dropps). I suggest trying to find ones that are free of parabens, dyes, and guarantee that they are biodegradable. In addition to being free of parabens, phosphates, and other harmful chemicals, these detergents also eliminate the plastic container the majority of detergent comes in. There are some brands that offer cardboard packaging, but the development of this process uses much more water than strips (although still significantly less than plastic bottles), and still leaves you with a large bottle to be disposed of. So, while choosing a product in a cardboard container is better than plastic, I would still opt for the detergent strips because they are even a bigger leap in the direction of eco-friendly laundry practices.
As always, thank you for joining me on this pursuit to a more sustainable life!