Note: $4.99 Canadian = $3.99 USD. If that makes any difference.

It's my favorite detergent for really stinky grungy clothes.

Not a bad deal I think. Very well liked for how it cleans but the scent is not for everyone. Take a wiff before you buy it to see if you like the smell. This is the perfect size to try, then if you like it you know it's safe to get the bigger size (and more$).

I didn't realize it was in Canada! Sorry! It does make it a better deal.

Consumer reports says persil 2 in 1 cleans better than tide. I’ve also read that regular persil (not 2 in 1) is their middle of the line detergent and not as strong as 2 in 1. For that price I would grab it. A small bottle at Walmart is 5.24 usd so that’s a good deal especially Canadian.

I have seen that size in the grocery store and it's $6.99.

I found it to be extremely high viscosity. It wouldn’t rinse out no matter what, and caused heavy pilling. This is only 2 teaspoons in a LG FL. If anyone wants to check residue, air-dry something. This shirt was frozen stiff with Persil:

holisticthug, interesting. I've line dried tons of laundry washed in Persil, and have never had that problem.

We have “very soft” water, do you know your water hardness level? I’d be interested in what machine you have, and if you’re in the US. I can’t get anything to wash out and had three techs say nothing is wrong w the machine..

But I will add that Persil and Tide powder were the worst in terms of rinsing.

holistic, wow that residue is crazy! That shirt looks so sad and abused.

What detergents do you find to be the easiest to wash out?

Our water is pretty hard, so we use a whole house water softener. My machine is the whirlpool WFW85HEFW, and I've been very happy with both the washing and rinsing.

Yeah! That kind of residue is pretty much par for the course with commercial detergents. Just tried Puracy liquid on a load with a new tee and it’s definitely stiffer but nothing like the tormented one posted earlier. I did start with 3 extra rinses for comparison. It did a damn fine job cleaning and removing odors. They told me to use only warm or cold water to activate the enzymes (the opposite of everything I’ve read). As far as powders, Savvy Green washed out the best but it didn’t eliminate odors unless on extra hot.
Also just tried a goat milk soap based “detergent” (homemade), what a joke. Soap in a HE is a very bad idea, despite the glowing reviews.
I’ve tried about 14 detergents over a year period, including one called Rockin’ Green that has a formula for soft-normal and hard water. It left a slippery residue on my clothing and didn’t clean well.
Amy, thanks for filling me in. I’ve been looking for any patterns and overlaps to explain these problems. LG seems to have more pilling and rinsing issues, so our famously soft Portland water doesn’t help matters. I wish I had known about the Water Plus (extra gallon+) feature on other models, before I got this one. Users said it made a big difference.

Well, looks like there is a $2 coupon that Persil Canada is throwing about recently. Unfortunately the liquidator does not take coupons, but a local grocery has it on sale for $5.97...so I picked up two bottles of the "Intense Fresh" for $3.97 each. So will be giving it a try!

I don't think I have smelled the intense version before. Was in Walmart yesterday and they had only a few bottles of Persil. Mostly empty shelves with a sticker above the price than said "Out of stock" .

Let us know how you like the Intense. I only tried the pearls original version, cleaned well but the smell killed my sinuses. Gave it away.

I love the Persil 2/1 and it has taken out many stains that had been washed/dried many times in various liquid Tide products. No need to spot white shirt collars and cuffs. I have used all of the other liquids and they are good too but maybe not quite as strong. This is very subjective though. We are very sensitive to soap residues and it rinses out very well(SQTL)

holisticthug, I wonder if your detergent is reacting to something in your water and making some sort of precipitate rather than not rinsing out, especially if you are having problems with so many detergents. Do you also have problems with shampoos or soaps which can share many of the same ingredients?

Holistic, when you hand wash, do your items rinse? Do you take the items from your wash and try rinsing in the sink? What results do you get. Sure sounds like a machine issue to me.

Wekick, I used a water hardness test strip and results were 0 PPM, although it doesn’t mean there aren’t other minerals. Our water here in Portland is officially “very soft “. I need to get my hands on some detailed info about the mineral content. About 75% of the country has hard water apparently. It’s interesting bc I bought a pre-owned sweatshirt from a girl who lives a few miles away and could feel heavy detergent residue on it. My roommate was at a someone’s house nearby and noticed their tablecloth appeared crinkled with residue as well. I’m going to ask around on our neighborhood online forum about this. It is difficult to rinse shampoo and soap. If I use soap in the shower there is a ton of pink soap scum that’s constantly having to be scrubbed. Being from the east coast and using hard water, this is all new/strange to me. I think detergent and shampoo makers may want to consider formulations based on water hardness! I think it’s the main reason people’s results can vary so widely.
Enduring, I haven’t tried washing anything out in the sink. Had great results with the Puracy, which is very low viscosity so hopefully I can trust my new clothes will last longer. The same thing happened with the new Sidekick pedestal washer (poor rinsing, pilling) so I couldn’t attribute it to the LG FL...

holisticthug,

I don't have anything of much use to add to the above, but did want to mention something about the pink soap scum you reference above and hardness of water...

We too live in a soft water area (top of the water chain so to speak). I'm originally from So Cal where the water is on the harder side (very bottom of same water chain). I never had negative laundry issues in LA and didn't have them here when we moved here 25+ years ago. When I did start having negative laundry issues (some similar to yours) is when phosphates were removed from cleaning products. We have battled detergent build up/residue and odors not removing from laundry since the removal of phosphates. It seems to me that a little bit of water hardness is not all that bad of a thing, all things considered.

What I did have issues with living in hard water area was keeping the tub/shower clean. An ongoing battle with scum and hard water deposits on tub surfaces and fixtures. That issue mysteriously disappeared upon moving to this soft water area. I didn't know why at the time though and frankly I was happy to not have to scrub the showers and tubs so often. What did become a problem was the pink scummy build up in the shower corners and shower door tracks. It is kind of slimy when wet and will become a dried up paste kind of substance if allowed to dry, such as when away from home for a week or so. Co-workers informed me it was because we had high iron levels in our water. That made sense given the color. If left long enough, the pink substance would take on a reddish hue.

I learned reading various threads in the archives in this forum that the pink substance in many cases is a mold or biofilm, if you will. I have noticed that it will give off an odor if not cleaned with bleach soon enough, so perhaps it is a mold/biofilm. I suspect in our case here, it's a combo of iron deposits and a weird mold. In my unscientific thoughts, I suppose (in our case at least), the lack of water hardness, while it has it's benefits, it has it's down side as well, i.e., the difficulty with rinsing hair, bodies, laundry, dishes, showers, etc...

I've, for the most part, overcome the laundry issues with the help of the members of this board either through direct advise or gleaning info from past posts when I have done a forum search on the topic.

Using powder detergent help greatly, as did using sodium percarbonate in hot water on white/lights loads. I also add STPP (phosphate) to some wash loads. On the dark loads, adding a little Borax helped with breaking down the biofilm build up and removing body oils and odors. Borax holds a caveat however, because it is a mild bleaching agent if used in high enough dose. I use Borax in the showers too in-between scrub outs--1/4 cup mixed in a water bottle and squirt it on the surfaces twice a week keeps that strange odor away. Lemishine powder laundry booster is magic in a bottle as far as I am concerned with our water issues. Hot water washes with powder detergent and the above additives does seem to greatly improve these issues for us. Also learning how much detergent is 'enough' for us. It's not as much as the label recommends. MamaP here tells us to feel the water for slipperiness once the detergent is mixed in the wash. If it feels slippery, you've added enough. That works here.

We used to have those 'board' laundry items if air dried until I made changes to how I do things. I air dried a full wash load indoors yesterday and everything was nice and soft and unboard-like. It took a while for the accumulation of detergent build to come out, but I think I'm there now and air drying the laundry is not such a 'rough' experience anymore. Towels I do always put in the dryer since I'm a mold-a-phobe having lived with musty towels for years and years before I learned this and that from this forum.

I hope Puracy works well for you!! Let us know how it's going when you have used it for a while. We all have to find that formula that works for us. Laundry used to be so easy! lol

The pink substance in showers is Serratia marcescens, a bacteria that is common and not harmful. It feeds on fat such as bar soap and skin. To minimize the pink slime use liquid soap and wipe dry your shower after use. Bleach will remove and kill it. Iron in water is not pink but orange or rust colored and bleach will not remove the stain but will usually set the stain. Use a rust remover on iron or rust stains such as Whink Rust Remover.

As I learned here from the resident experts if you have detergent build up use STPP (bought at a chemical supply house) and no detergent in hot water and run a load of laundry. If you have build up you will see cloudy filmy water and often suds. If the build up is very bad you may have to do this more than once.

To figure out how much to use requires starting with a few tablespoons then check the water to see if it feels slippery. If it doesn't add another spoonful till after mixing up it feels slippery. I hope someone else jumps in and explains it better than me, I hope what I am saying is making sense.

This is great info guys! I’m going to pass it along to a detergent manufacturer who has taken interest in my research over the past several months. Puracy’s marketing director told me they had tested theirs in soft water and that it performs well. Also that liquids are easier on fabrics than powders, which did seem to dry them out and increase pilling. So far so good but that’s with 3 extra rinses...I’ll experiment with Borax, maybe try the STTP at some point, but as it is there are a lot of clothes that are too shabby and need to be recycled. I guess I’d rather it be the water than the machine :)
The pink slime explanation makes perfect sense. Luckily there seems to be no smell and it’s easy to remove from the tub and tile. Finally! The puzzle pieces have fallen into place. Can’t wait to share this info, many thanks!!

Also meant to add that one tee I’ve been air drying and always stiff with other detergents had become softer and actually wearable after using Puracy, just once. So maybe it is going to do a pretty good job at lifting some of the residue. I had been using a powder with washing soda (borax too?) and it couldn’t remove enough residue to make it soft enough to wear, even though they said it would take 4 washes to remove previous residue. Just makes me wonder how much got baked on in the dryer, the residue is hardly noticeable if I don’t air dry.

SEA SEA & HMorton, Re: the Phosphates. I was interested in the reason for their ban, I remembered there was a huge problem with them not biodegrading, and contributing to algae blooms which sucks up all the oxygen in an aquatic ecosystem, killing fish and other species. Basically all this stuff circulates back into our groundwater so it comes back to us too. But from another health perspective I would be EXTREMELY leery of using phosphates on anything you wear next to the skin for the simple reason that arsenic binds to phosphates. Obviously you don’t want arsenic being absorbed into your body or breathing in particles. Check out this LA times article:
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-23/home/hm-19020_1_liquid-laundry-detergents

“What else is in your laundry detergent? In Seattle, the water treatment utility recently asked the nonprofit group Washington Toxics Coalition to take a look.

One of the things the researchers looked for was toxic metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead and mercury, which earlier studies had found in high concentrations. These metals don't biodegrade in water treatment. Instead, they concentrate in sewage sludge or are discharged with treated water.

The coalition didn't find tons of metals but did find a surprising correlation: The more phosphates a detergent contained, the more arsenic it was likely to contain. In fact, the coalition calculated that if everyone used high-phosphate detergents, that would account for 20% of all the arsenic that comes down the city's drain pipes--about 200 pounds of the deadly stuff a year.

(Detergent manufacturers don't add arsenic to their product. The metal is simply attracted to the same materials phosphates are. When phosphates are mined from the earth, arsenic comes along, too.) “

holisticthug,

You ask good questions. Answers I don't have. Maybe some of the other members have insight for you. That's a debate I'm not getting into. : )

We can only do what is best for each of us with the information and resources we have.

It's not easy. I get it. What to do? What's the best choice. That's something we have to make up our own minds about.

For what it's worth, there used to be a poster on this board who lived in Portland. I've seen his or her posts in the archives. This person was a big fan of Biokleen liquid and then liked Vaska liquid as well. He or she would use Borax with either of those two liquids and claimed to have good laundry results. So, maybe if the Puracy ends up needing to be alternated with another detergent, one of those might be beneficial for you.

Is Puracy a powder or liquid? I personally do not like using Borax with powders. ..powder already has a fair amount of Sodium Carbonate than add borax and you could be looking at more residue than acceptable. Borax isn't as hard to remove from textiles as carbonate but it can still cause residue. Borax is best as far as residue goes using with liquids.

As for phosphates and arsenic....what phosphate are you referring to? There are different types of phosphates. Interesting ...wonder how many people died of arsenic back when laundry detergent contained upwards of 50% phosphates. Not to mention the high amounts of phosphates in automatic dishwasher detergent up to the end of 2010. Hmm so all that arsenic was used on our dishes...

Holisticthug, can you please provide a link for your info about phosphates and arsenic?

SEA SEA, I understand your position but it would be remiss of me not to share about the phosphate/arsenic connection. I’m in no position to debate it academically without a formal understanding of chemistry but my better judgement tells me it’s probably best avoided. Toxicity is well-documented and cumulative micro-exposures of any substance is rarely (if ever) taken into account, even though the human body absorbs many pounds of chemicals per year. Phosphates take a toll on the environment, same as Optical brighteners, which also do not biodegrade and harm our environment. We are all creatures of habit and enjoy the luxury of behavioral freedoms, but when there is a delicate balance that is negatively impacted, be it a human body or developing body, or the macrocosm of it within our planet, being open to change is a form of enlightened self-interest for all of us. Prevention is the best cure anyway. It’s great that there is such an increased interest in the green/non-toxic lifestyle, I curbed asthma attacks by ditching a dishwashing rinse-aid that was setting me off. It’s usually the small things...

As for the suggestion regarding the Vaska/Biokleen user, thank-you I did read his posts. He stopped using Biokleen bc they changed the formula to SLS. I vaguely remember using it in SoCal and not being impressed. The Vaska (along with Tide Purclean) can be high sudsing. Another member in AZ with soft water who swore by Vaska said he couldn’t achieve clean results without using so much that it created too many suds. His last post said he switched to LanoSoft but it is soap based and long-term results would be disappointing. I may give Amazon’s powder brand a shot, mainly bc it is risk-free like Puracy.

I'm not trying to debate but trying to educate myself...in order to do that a link providing info is helpful.

Mamapinky,
Thanks for the tips about using Borax. Puracy is a liquid, they said liquid would be easier to rinse, in my experience so far that proves to be true.

The LA Times article on detergents and phosphates was the link I posted, http://articles.latimes.com/1994-07-23/home/hm-19020_1_liquid-laundry-detergents. As mentioned in the article, the Washington Toxic Coalition did the research concluding that arsenic binds to phosphates, it didn’t say what kind, but if you are inclined to locate that official report online I would be interested in your thoughts on it.

I can appreciate that there are probably no cases of acute poisoning from arsenic using detergents. It’s the long-term cumulative effects of exposure, along with potential for developmental disruptions in children that I would be concerned about. Heavy metals tend to be stored in adipose tissue or taken up in the thyroid (contributing to metabolic disorders), especially if one is exposed on a daily basis because of their vocation. I’ve spoken to many hair stylists with auto-immune disorders that say it’s rampant among those working in the haircare & cosmetics industry. There’s a well-known make-up artist named Rose-Marie Swift who created a non-toxic makeup line after discovering a direct link between her own health problems and high levels of heavy metals showing up in her system. Her blood serum level of toxics prompted her doctor to ask if she worked in the cosmetics industry. Not trying to be preachy here, but nowadays some doctors are saying if you can’t eat it, don’t put it on your skin, or even next to it.

I smelled this stuff in my local BJ's club the other day and it's way over the top. Very very strong.