As I’ve often suspected the most environmentally friendly way to clean your clothes is with soap. Ironically everybody washed clothes with soap prior to World War Two. However during the war there was a shortage of fat but a surplus of oil. As a result, scientists invented petroleum based detergents to wash clothes. It has taken us nearly 60 years to realize what a bad mistake we made during the war promoting the use of detergents to do the laundry. Detergents are really bad for the environment. The nastiest ingredient in many traditional detergents is phosphate. Phosphates cause algae bloom that chokes the life out of lakes and streams. Although most US states have banned detergents with phosphates there are plenty of other chemicals in detergents that poison wildlife, cause allergies in humans and are irritants to people with certain skin conditions.
Therefore, the easiest, cheapest and greenest way to do the laundry is to put soap suds in the machine. It sounds too good to be true. And to some extent it is. Firstly, soap suds only work well with soft water (water without minerals). As many people know from all the scaling on their kettles, the water they use is hard. The minerals in hard water react with soap to create an insoluble film that leaves a soap scum residue that turns clothes gray.
The unwanted graying caused by using soap flakes with hard water can be stopped by adding half a cup of vinegar to the rinse water.
A good all-natural soap for the laundry is the popular Nellie’s Laundry Soda. The marketing of the product is very 1950’s just to remind us about the good old days when housewives used soap not detergent to clean their clothes. Only those good old days were in the 30’s.
