One of the first things we had a look at in the house to reduce plastic and use fewer chemicals was laundry detergent. With two active and outdoors kids, the washing machine is a critical member of our household.
Before thinking about the detergent, there's other steps you can take to make sure your washing has a smaller footprint. We already rack-dry our clothes, so we've already minimised the energy consumption by not using the drier, and when we bought the washing machine a few years back, we made sure it had a great energy rating. And we wash at low temperatures to help make the wash cycle itself use only the amount of energy it needs. Note that this will impact on how well different detergents will work, but we're looking for a detergent which can work at low temperatures.
Review: TruEarth laundry detergent
We'd been regular users of Persil or Ariel, and generally bought in the largest pack sizes we could, but wanted to change it up for a lower chemical, lower packaging option. Options out there include refills, concentrates and powders - all of which offer lower packaging or more sustainable packaging and lower transport weights - and options with fewer chemical ingredients.
TruEarth offers all of these with lower weight for transport, better packaging and a much smaller roster of ingredients. It's in strips which dissolve in the wash rather than liquid, so is super light to transport, has all card packaging (see picture), which was very appealing. The linen fragrance is pleasant and the theory of the eco-strips is great.
In terms of ingredients, TruEarth has:
Paraben-free
Phosphate-free
Free of added dyes
Free of chlorine bleach
Free of 1,4-dioxane, as certified by independent laboratory tests
Readily biodegradable in accordance with OECD 310D
Hypoallergenic, certified by independent dermatologists
Vegan: no animal-based ingredients or testing on animals by us or our ingredient suppliers
On the downside, it is made currently in Canada, so if you go for this option, be aware that it'll take some time and has some shipping - but the product is so light-weight that i'd guess the transport implications even of freighting it from Canada is better than liquid detergents in the UK. But - if it takes off, hopefully it'd be available in Europe at some point
But how was our experience of them?
First up, I put them in the drum, rather than in the drawer, which led to lumps of sticky mess coming out of the wash - user error. We found it worked best is torn up and put in the detergent drawer. And for our loads, one strip was definitely not enough - so we'd systematically use two strips for every wash - but we do have a large drum and only ever have full loads!
Second, we found that if we left the washing after the load was finished for a coupe of hours (yes, life gets in the way!) it often smelt damp and musty already, something that doesn't happen with the mainstream concentrates that we'd been using. I'm sure some people will be horrifies that I don't wait around for the washing to finish to hang it up, but there you go.
Perhaps most importantly, with a really dirty load of washing, we did end up re-washing a couple of loads.
So all in all, think TruEarth would be great for clean loads or people without kids! Loved the ethos, the packaging and the concept - unfortunately it just didn't work as well as we needed for large loads at low temperatures.
We've actually gone back to the drawing board and are trialling a new detergent at the moment, based on UK produced Bio-D and we'll let you know how we get on in a few weeks.
What if electrically heated water and clothes drying were free because you have solar panels, and you still produce more power than you use? The hot water would kill more of the bacteria so your laundry wouldn't smell bad or be stiff and crinkly.