Are you referring to products such as Eco Nuts, Eco's, Seventh Gen? Grab Green??

I've tried many if these products, my results were failed. My most recent was the GG which does get a lot of love here, for me it left residue in the textiles and the washer which doesn't surprise me since its main, bulk ingredients are washing soda and baking soda.

Most, if not all, organic laundry detergents are rubbish! While not organic and 100% natural...Grab Green powder pods do an AMAZING job. Naturalish ingredients and powerful cleaning. With hot water, they will whiten about as good as Tide with Bleach powder or Persil powder Pearls or Universal powder.

I'm not familiar with Grab Green, but I don't use pods. MamapinkyO, Ecos and Seventh Generation may be "natural" but are are not organic, and Seventh Generation contains sodium lauryl sulfate. Larsi, ouch! I guess it's a matter of perspective, as I would consider conventional laundry detergents to be "rubbish"! BUT I understand we have differing standards and expectations for laundry products. I am fairly satisfied with my organic choices so far as I feel like less than stellar outcomes are to me a fair trade for products which will do no harm. I'm posting hoping to find an organic offering out there which may do a better job than the ones I've tried. I get that most people, especially those here, focus on the outcome, but I am not interested in using products that can potentially harm, like those with 1,4-dioxane contamination, etc. I'm not wanting to ruffle feathers or offend anyone, or debate merits or choices....just hoping to find what other organic user are noticing and finding.

I actually live an organic lifestyle, aside from laundry and dishwashing preferences. I do a ton of laundry and am a fanatic about good results the first time. I think adequate rinsing negates some of the affect of mainstream detergents. In the dishwasher, again, I demand results. I do massive amounts of home canning and dehydrating, do not pre-rinse, and I want my jars clean without residue (no rinse aid). Again, the key would be rinsing. Dishes are not absorbent, so I cannot see how they would hold on to potentially hazardous ingredients. Laundry, yes, but that is where I feel rinsing thoroughly comes into play. To each his own, of course. Household cleaning is done with homemade soaps; I make my own bath/hand washing soaps, bars, and lotions. Actually, I do love Dr. Bronners and it can be used in the wash. Have you ever tried that in your laundry?

Indigo Rose:

Not everyone is focused on only one thing (outcome, no harm etc).

Many of us here are focused on optimizing multiple things at once.

Organic choices really did very well for food, for example.

Sadly, not exactly the same is true when cleaning.

I'd hope you would agree with some of us here, that the reason one uses vinegar, ammonia, lemons, soap/detergent etc is to improve cleaning so we can use less water, thus causing less pollution (purifying water to pipe to entire cities is not something that "just happens", it even involves things like chlorine sometimes, which, incidentally, whether we want to or not (or whether the "reputation" is that chlorine bleach always ends up degrading into water and salt) tends to work because it heavily reacts with stuff so it kills the germs and removes colors *and* some of the compounds generated include dioxins. So, someone using *only* water to clean (and lots of it) can unwillingly and unwittingly cause even more serious pollution than someone using soap or detergent. Same thing with warm and hot water, yes, it *does* use more energy and causes pollution, but sometimes the tipping point favors using warm/hot water to save us from other problems. What about people with private wells? Well, maybe they are lucky enough their well water does not need any treatment, but I assure you most of the private well water people need a *pump*, which uses energy and tends to generate pollution. Also, some of those people are using a septic system, which restricts their water usage, again tilting the balance towards detergents and hot water so they can use less water.

All that being said, please take it from someone who does care a great deal about the environment, and preserving resources for future use (especially petroleum), and I take a lot of care and effort listening to people much brighter than myself who work in the several different fields and I pay attention to the total cost to the system.

This is hard to hear, so please bear with me.

For good or bad, there is no magic involved here -- if you want to cause the *least* damage to the system as a whole, please buy the *best* full-featured detergent you can afford/get your hands on, enzymes and all. Use water as hot as you can to clean the garments, and dose the detergent appropriately (less for hot water, more for warm, even more for cold). Rinse very well. Use a HE washer if you can.

Here's why: currently, there is *no* detergent which is "green" no matter what they tell you. Huge companies like P&G, Unilever, Henkel etc spend the big bucks to try and find the most effective least damaging detergent they can -- the enzymes are there so they can help the detergent clean as gently as possible and biodegrade into stuff as fast as possible and generate the least amount of pollution. That's why you are paying the big bucks, in addition to the performance you get. So the total load on the system (energy, water, sewage treatment, manufacturing etc) can be as small as possible.

You mention sodium lauryl sulfate, for example. SLS is several generations behind, it's true, and it has its problems, but it's still *much* better than the majority of soaps and the detergents from 1930's to 1960's. Detergents from as recently as 25 years ago are surprisingly harsh to the user's skin, the clothes being cleaned *and* the environment/system.

And *all* the "green" "cruelty free" shops that I know of do not do any research into new stuff, they buy bulk agents like sodium lauryl sulfate and sodium laureth sulfate, among others to put in their detergents. They wait until a component is either off-patent and/or not popular anymore (even though the big companies ran all the tests on animals) and use them in their products.

Here's the thing -- you should be completely capable of just putting your dirty, sorted clothes into a HE washer, load the dispenser(s) with one or two high end products, start the machine and come back to *clean* clothes, with few exceptions, which usually involve stains/soil that are not common to the regular household with normal people. If you are doing most of the work, or using an array of things to clean your clothes, something is off, and either you are paying too much money or you are causing unnecessary damage to the system.

I'm sorry if this is news to you or some of you, but it's the honest truth and I have *nothing* to gain, financially or otherwise by giving you this advice, except that you said you want to cause less damage to the system and so do I.

I am a regular computer geek by training and profession, in case it matters.

(And yes, curiosity has struck me many times, just as anyone else here. I've tested many products, I asked as many questions from as many specialists as I could.)

As for what works well for you, it will, as you take a look at the site, depend heavily on the water quality available to you. Some people will find that one brand works better for them, 50 miles away some other brand will be better. It has a lot to do with what was in the water and how it was treated before it got to your washer.

Peace and Best wishes,

-- Paulo.

What is the criteria for an organic cleaning agent?

I'm going to hazard a guess and say people probably mean "plant-based and/or sourced from renewable sources" when they use the phrase for detergent or cleaning supplies.

I'm not sure if they care the animal that supplied the fat for the soap or the plants that supplied other ingredients were raised in a pesticide and antibiotic free environment, like they mean when it's food.

There seems to also be some confusion, when people talk about such things, between "made from (or with) natural ingredients" and "not harmful to you". For example, one can get coconut oil, as an extreme, which is edible and "not harmful" by most standards, and make coconut soap, which can be all kinds of nasty to people's eyes and mucous membranes, and also cause some pollution where the untreated sewage is released.

Incidentally, a couple of centuries ago, just to show how much things change, soaps made with lye and animal fats were "harsh" and reserved for cleaning, laundry and maybe showering/bathing by adults, people with sensitive skin or babies were bathed in coconut soap, when possible.

The coconut oil was useful to make soap because it contains "lauric acid", which reacts with the bases and becomes soap. Lauric acid is what produces the "lauryl sulfate" that people are talking about being "nasty".

For more on that, please see the wikipedia article (Lauric Acid).

Just because you got sodium lauryl sulfate from coconut oil, it doesn't make it *any* different from all the artificially (read "from petroleum") produced product.

The only difference, from a user point of view, *should* be we deplete the petroleum resources, and while one can in fact get lauryl sulfate from plants, one cannot get many kinds of plastics and medicines from plants that we can get from petroleum, and some day we might regret having burned so much petroleum just for the heat. Then again, maybe science will have figured some other way out by then.

Sadly, until that time comes, we will have to put up with all kinds of insinuations, falsehoods, half truths and, sometimes, just enough truth from some manufacturers to lend a cloud of "plausible" to their claims that their products are "natural", "green" or even "organic".

There is no regulation that prevents me or anyone from slapping labels on stuff saying all kinds of stuff, because people will fall for just about anything, including "Gluten Free" and "Cholesterol Free" on apples, for example (hint, fruits in general do not have cholesterol, and as far as I can tell, there are no apples for sale with gluten added. Another hint? A *much* more truthful label would tell you "low in cyanide" or, even better, "no cyanide added", because apple seeds, like many other fruits, contain a natural small amount of cyanide in them.)

Cheers,

-- Paulo.

"Organic" in chemistry means it'll burn. :) Like petroleum. I think in farming, where the French equivalent is "biologique", it means organism based since it was originally used to mean decay based fertilizers rather than engineered (usually from petroleum) ones. Though if you go back far enough, petroleum is an organic decay substance. :)

I am sensitive and cannot use mass market detergents. I can't even touch Tide powder, let alone risk having any cling to my clothes (another vote for good rinsing!).

We don't have a lot of heavily soiled laundry. I use 7th Generation Free & Clear liquid, which I can touch, though wash off immediately, and rinses out completely. It works fine. The clothes come out clean and fresh. I do add OxyClean to the towels/underwear, mostly out of habit. It used to be borax. Out of habit. For OMG I didn't buy laundry liquid moments, I keep a Method pump. It also works fine. But again, not a lot of heavy soil or staining here. Mostly food spots. And I do treat those with Parker & Bailey Stain Medic, which is a conventional kind of product which also does not feel like it's dissolving the skin on my hands.

I hope you can find "organic" laundry products that have little impact on the environment and on you personally. However, I have a pet peeve when calling it organic, as many organic substances are very dangerous. For example, I am allergic to most natural shampoo, but am not allergic to whatever chemical they use to make Suave. I would rethink that organic is good and chemical is bad as organic includes many chemicals. Grab Green works well for me and you can buy it as a powder on line. I use the environmentally friendly little pods. They are tiny and get placed in the drum before adding clothes. Good luck in finding the correct detergent for you and please post it here. I would love to find more good products that are earth and people friendly.

Hi everyone - sorry to post and run, but I have an unexpected matter to manage out of state and will be away for a few? days. I look forward to spending more time reading and responding when I return. Thank you very much!

I have used Charlie's soap (powder) for years due to my children's eczema. We have been very happy with it. I find that it cleans well, rinses out completely, isn't too hard on our clothes, and causes no skin irritation. I have tried a LOT of different "natural" detergents, and have tried at least 6 "recipes" of homemade detergent, and have been disappointed in almost all of them. The exceptions being Charlie's (as mentioned) and Allen's liquid detergent. If Charlie's stops working for us, I will likely go back to All free and clear or tide free, and double rinse.

I actually find that detergents like Charlie's/Nellie's if used with warm to hot water and spiked with some oxygen bleach (I buy pure sodium percarbonate, but Charlie's oxygen bleach has the highest SP concentration per their MSDS of any of the commercially available options that I've seen - over 85%) take out most messes and stains. This is what I use for my dog's bedding exclusively, which has all sorts of stains - from mud to food to oily fur residue.

Recordaras, where do you get Charlie's oxygen bleach and does it have an activator?

This is a most interesting thread and very thought provoking.

The best price I've found for Charlie's Oxygen Bleach is on Vitacost - $9.99 for 2.64 lbs and they usually have additional 10-20% off coupons you can stack, but looks like they are out of stock right now. That pricing is on par (a bit less) with pure sodium percarbonate of the same size from ProSupplyOutlet, but with the bulk stuff you can buy more to get a much lower cost per pound if you go through a lot.

There is no activator (I think only Dropps 4-in-1 packs contain an activator, I have those too but very much prefer a powder), it's 85% or more sodium percarbonate, 2-12% sodium carbonate and less than 2.5% disodium metasilicate per the MSDS.

I like my Mrs Meyers. It's my regular go-to. I live in the desert southwest so I try to live an environmentally-conscious existence. Occasionally, you have to resort to strong chemicals for one thing or another. Constantly wasting resources and pouring toxic chemicals and noxious substances down the drain is cause for alarm in this area.

I use to use the GreenShield Organic Liquid Laundry detergent. I bought it from Vitacost for $15. I never had any issues with it. I just missed my other LD and switched back to non organic as it's cheaper and when I run out I don't have to wait for it to get here.

Pets deserve nothing less than we would use for ourselves.

Well said Pat!!

Meanwhile, it's often suggested that unwanted detergents be donated to animal shelters.