How To Make Your Laundry Eco-Friendly

Making your laundry eco-friendly is one of the quickest ways to really improve your home’s impact on the planet. In this post, we’ll go through various ways you can improve your laundry practices with everything from washing detergent to dryer balls.

Read on and get cleaning!

Eco Friendly Laundry Day: General Tips

There are plenty of general changes you can make on laundry day. Try out the following:

• Turn the temperature down. Most loads will come out fine on a cooler cycle. Save the heat for when your washing really needs it.
• Forget fabric softener and drop a cap of white vinegar in final rinse instead. This cuts through any residual detergent, descales the machine and puts some anti-bacterial power into your wash.
• Don’t forget how often clothes benefit from a simple airing rather than a full-blown wash. Hanging dry-clean-only cashmere sweaters outside for an hour or so gives you much more wear-ability between laundry loads. (Especially in the sun)
• Only use the machine for full loads.
• Line dry whenever possible.
• Run the machine’s waste outlet to the garden and benefit from your greener safer waste water to keep your garden happy!
• You could always opt out of detergent altogether with home-made cleaning recipes
• Consider using dryer balls to quicken the time in the dryer

Detergent

With so much laundry detergent literally going down the drain and into our waterways, we should all be switching to a safe detergent.

If we weren’t all so darn clean we wouldn’t be having such a negative impact on the planet just by doing the laundry! But, the truth is we like our laundry to be REALLY clean, and with the labor saving appliances on hand, we are able to clean our laundry much more regularly than in days gone by.

Laundry detergent can contain enzymes and bleaches, as well as phosphates and other unfriendly particles that are slow to break down. Water treatment companies have a tough job filtering all this toxic waste out of that water heading for rivers and the sea.

Plus, we all know how irritating detergents can be. The only reason manufacturers try to sell us ‘Gentle’, ‘Mild’, or ‘Baby Safe’ detergents is because their standard products so commonly cause skin irritations and allergies.  Many consumers switch to a safe detergent for the new baby’s laundry, but surely our older skin could do with just as much care and attention too, right?

Safe Laundry Detergent – What to Look For:

Obviously companies like Simple Green and Seventh Generation will provide a safe detergent option, but sometimes even the conventional manufacturers may have something to offer. To check if your product is a safe detergent, check their ingredients for the following:

• Avoid phosphates.
• Avoid chlorine bleach and whitening agents. Opt instead for non-chlorine bleach made from sodium percarbonate.
• Choose readily biodegradable.
• Choose plant based detergents wherever possible.
• Avoid synthetic fragrances if you or your family are prone to suffer from allergies.
• Avoid ‘biological’ detergents containing enzymes (they clean brilliantly but are often extremely irritating on skin).
• Choose concentrated safe detergents to reduce packaging and transport costs to the environment.

For more information on the components of laundry detergent click here.

Choosing a safe detergent is simple, it just requires a little reading. Ignore the ‘natural’ or ‘green’ packaging and check out that ingredients list to make sure your purchase really is safer for you and the environment.

Dryer Balls

But, what about dryer balls? There are a few brands available – we’ll talk about three: Nellie’s Dryer Balls, Dryer Balls by Smart Sheep and Woolzie’s Dryer Balls.

Why Dryer Balls?

Dryer balls save energy and reduce waste. In an ideal world, of course, we would all line dry our laundry outdoors. The sun would help brighten whites and the breeze would freshen and reduce creasing/wrinkles.

But if your hectic lifestyle, apartment, or the weather make outdoor drying a rare luxury, the dryer is the next best choice.

If you use a dryer regularly, you already know how much energy it can use, and how dryer sheets help to prevent cling and lint build up.

Dryer Balls = Greener Cleaning

Reducing the time in the dryer is a sure fire way to reduce your energy bill and make your laundry day a little greener.

With a dryer ball, you shouldn’t need to use a fabric softener in the washer either. This saves you some money and stops your home from wastefully consuming extra chemicals it doesn’t need to be using.

So, dryer balls save energy and reduce waste. All in all, a win-win situation for the greener approach to cleaning (and living in general).

How Do Dryer Balls Work?

Dryer balls work by getting in the way of the laundry! Their bulk separates items, increasing air flow and thus helping items dry faster. This gentle tumbling also helps the fibers in your fabrics realign themselves and soften them.

But, do Nellie’s, Smart Sheep’s, and Woolie’s Dryer Balls work? Check out their customer reviews from Amazon and you’ll see that indeed they do.

According to Woolzie’s dryer ball, which I think applies to dryer balls in general:

“Woolzies save time and energy by cutting down on drying time by an average of 25 percent per load.”

My Personal Experience

I’ve used dryer balls on and off for 5 years. I like them a lot. My main issue is that I misplace them frequently because I’m somewhat absentminded. But for the organized laundry-goers, dryer balls will definitely be a good long-term investment.

I’ve purchased both Woolzie’s (in 2013) and Smart Sheep (in 2015). Both work great. They do help your clothes dry faster, though if you do need to dry something really large, like a large comforter (I know you’re not really supposed to dry them), I’m not sure how much they’ll help.

Anyways, they work very well with most laundry.

Essential Oils

10-15 minutes before the end of the dry cycle, you can add a few drops of essential oils to the dryer balls. Your laundry will come out with the extra fragrance.

I did this to great effect for awhile, but due to absentmindedness usually forgot to do it at the right time.

Dryer Balls vs Tennis Balls

Tennis balls work very well, but dryer balls work even better. They smell better, they stay quieter in a spinning dryer, and they seem cleaner to me.

You could also make a dryer ball with 2 socks, but it might be a little on the light side in terms of weight.

Of course, if you’re allergic to wool, then maybe you should consider an alternative!

Soap Nuts

Soap Nuts are one of the oldest all-natural Cleaning Products around. Completely sustainable, simple to use and non-polluting, they really are one of the ultimate green cleaning products.

Maggie’s Soap Nuts from Amazon.

With eco-wash balls and safe detergents you’d think the laundry was all done. But, there is another green cleaner to keep your family safe, the planet happy, and your whites white. Soap Nuts have been used for over 5000 years on the East, but have only recently become available in the West.

So how do Soap Nuts compare as a green cleaner for your laundry?

Soap Nuts Info

Soap Nuts are not nuts at all, but they definitely are an all natural cleaning product. They are the purely dried fruits of the Soap Berry tree (Sapindus). There is no processing required to turn these fruits into an environmentally safe cleaner for your laundry.

How Do Soap Nuts Work?

The fruits of several varieties of sapindus or soapberry trees contain large amounts of saponins. These saponins are compounds found in many plants including soapwart, which were used historically to produce soaps in their native lands. It is the saponin which create soapy bubbles or a lather when agitated in water. This lather is able to dislodge particles and clean, just like the surfactants used in conventional cleaning products.

You can buy processed soap nuts which are turned into Soap Nuts Powder. They are still 100% biodegradable and safe on sensitive skin, but they do require a little manufacturing to process them. Plain old soap nuts are just dried, packed and shipped.

Although the trees grow throughout the tropics, the soap nuts available in the United States generally come from Nepal and India. Nothing is added, nothing is processed. You get a completely all natural cleaning product to do your laundry.

Safe Cleaning Product

Traditionally, soapnuts have been used for much more than just laundry. In South East Asia, they are used widely as shampoos and body soaps as well as household cleaners. With no additional components, there are no stabilizers or perfumes to aggravate sensitive skin.

Soapnuts are hypoallergenic, so safe for all your family’s skin. With no potentially harmful chemicals, they also care for the laundry, making them safe to use on delicate fabrics such as silks and wool.

Environmentally Friendly

From the production side of things, soap nuts are extremely green cleaners, but how about once you’ve used them? Of course, no chemicals are heading out of your washing machine, just soap nut residue. But is this safe?

In fact, the residue from soap nuts isn’t just safe, it is actually beneficial as it actively helps break down grey-water. They are recommended for septic systems as they promote a speedier decomposition of all the waste materials sent there.

Soap Nuts Review

I have to admit, I was sceptical. Surely these soap nuts are just too perfect. Kind to us, actually beneficial in our waste-water, surely there should be a catch. Well, apparently not!

Overall, they work pretty well!

Since I’m a bit absent-minded, I ended up losing the soap nuts after using them for a bit.  I also didn’t store them very well and after about losing them for about a month or two, they seemed a bit moldy because I didn’t dry them before accidently storing them “in a very safe place.”

But I found a liquid, 365-brand version (using soap nuts) that was ranked highly, in terms of eco-friendliness, and also seemed to clean well for normal laundry.  I switched to that version, though I think either work pretty well.

Eco Cleaning Power

Looking at all the customer reviews on retail sites like Amazon, the surprising thing is really how happy people are using them. Quite a few customers say they pre-treat greasy stains. But, we expect any green cleaner to be a little less powerful than tough toxic detergents. But, compared with ‘ordinary’ eco clean laundry detergents, these actually seem to come out on top.

People like the fact that they are concentrated. All you get are the soap nuts so you’re not paying to transport water across the country. And, depending on which brand you choose, you can avoid paying for plastic packaging too.

As the makers suggest not to use fabric softener with these, one or two customers say they miss fragrance. Soap balls leave clothes smelling of nothing at all, so people often throw a drop of essential oil into the rinse cycle to add some natural perfume to the washing.  (Of course you could use dryer balls instead of fabric softener…)

One of the things many customers seem happily surprised about is how well soap nuts eliminate odours. Even used to wash cloth diapers, the soap nuts didn’t need anything else to leave the laundry smelling completely fresh and neutral.

Value for Money

Customers all agree you get an awful lot of clean laundry for your money. Soap nuts can be purchased in small Sample Packs (enough to do 5 loads) so you don’t have to invest an awful lot of money to find out if they’re the right all natural cleaning product for you.

Soap nuts can also be purchased in a huge range of weights. Five soap nuts should be used in the average load, and are able to be re-used 4 or 5 times. Buying the larger packs which do 100 or more loads can mean your laundry only costs 10 cents a load which is definitely good green value for money.

Downsides

It seems the only real issue consumers have with soap nuts is that they can sometimes be a little sticky or “gloopy.” This means you can get your hands a little sticky when taking the nuts out of the packet and putting them into your machine.

But, with consumers also pointing out that this downside does not affect the power of soap nuts to clean efficiently, greenly, and cheaply, I can’t honestly say it bothers me. Because soap nuts react with water, this only seems to be an issue under humid conditions anyway.

Soap Nuts Reviewed

Overall customers are far more positive about this all natural cleaning product than they usually seem looking at voluntary reviews. Most are happy with the cleaning power though do admit to giving a little boost by pre-treating stains and extremely happy with the odour eliminating power of the product.

One thing a lot of customers highlight is that the soap nuts are not just for laundry. They can be used to clean just about anything by creating your own liquid soap by soaking in warm water. People even do their dishes with them!

With better green credentials than any of the competition because they are un-processed, natural and lightweight to transport they definitely have to be worth trying a Trial Pack to help you decide.

Personally, soap balls win hands down in the Eco Friendly Cleaning Laundry stakes. Being a truly All Natural Cleaning Product means we help the environment in so many more ways than with usual green or safe detergents.

Wash Balls

Another detergent alternative is wash balls. There are now a huge variety of Eco Wash Balls available. Every one has now heard of them as a way to make laundry cleaning more eco-friendly, but it can be unnerving to ditch the detergent (even if it is a safe & natural one)! Check out my personal review of my experiences with these nifty little green cleaning gadgets below, and of course a range of customer reviews from amazon too, who now offer a wide range of Eco cleaning gadgets.

Why Use Wash Balls?

One of the easiest ways to make your laundry cleaning Eco friendly is to ditch the detergent. The simplest way to do this is to choose Eco Wash Balls or Laundry Balls. These little globes are all you need, no fuss, no measuring, no worrying about trying to find a safe laundry detergent. Laundry is a big issue for our environment. One of the main reasons a larger family has such a big carbon footprint is the washing machine!

Early in the 20th Century, the developed world began washing more and more laundry and causing real issues for the treatment of waste water. Waste water became so foamy with traditional soaps that an alternative was needed. That alternative was oil based detergents. Impossible to biodegrade fully, they leached phosphates and altered the balance of algae and other plant growth in our waterways. But, the suds were gone!

Eco Wash Balls

I have been using Eco-Friendly Green Wash Laundry Balls for 2 years and have to say I have been very pleasantly surprised by the results. All my laundry is done on a cold wash so I am really testing the cleaning power of any green cleaner I choose to use in my machine. As well as ionising the water to allow it to carry out most of the cleaning action, they affect the PH level of the water too. Inside the green Eco wash balls is full of ceramic spheres. These raise the PH level to around 10, exactly as conventional laundry detergents do, which the manufacturers tell us, is why they can clean so effectively.

Now, I have to admit a certain scepticism about such things, but generally these Eco cleaners do work. However, I should warn you, that if your laundry is often very dirty you may well find the Wash Balls do not cope quite as well as your usual product. That isn’t any reason not to buy them though because it is simple to top up their cleaning power when faced with a really dirty load of laundry.

I regularly do loads of washing which are work-clothes covered in cement dust and all manner of building rubble residue. For such loads I simply add 1/2 a cup of baking soda to the detergent draw on the washer. With that little boost the Eco wash balls do a thoroughly good job of cleaning. So, even though I occasionally use additional green cleaners those Eco laundry balls still save me an awful lot of money and reduce my laundry pollution no end.

If you have really dirty laundry and really hard water you may find you have to resort to the additional power of a little baking soda more regularly than I do. In fact, you may do the same as one friend of mine (with a real detergent habit) who still uses an Eco friendly laundry detergent too. But, she uses only a tiny drop. Each bottle of her green cleaner lasts six months or more, when before she’d be lucky to get a month’s worth of laundry out of one. So even then, she saves money and pollution over time.

Benefits

You do not need to use fabric softeners with the laundry balls as there is no detergent residue which needs rinsing away. Things come out of the machine fresh and clean. But, as I have admitted to occasionally very dirty laundry needing a boost, sometimes the laundry really does stink. I’m talking about those damp dog smelling towels which get left in the sports-bag, or anything the cat has had a mishap on. In such cases I just squirt a little white vinegar in the fabric conditioner tray. That vinegar neutralizes any odour left in that smelly laundry.

I was seriously worried when I bought my Eco wash balls. At around $40 it seemed like an awful lot of green laundry detergent I could buy. But, in fact I have saved much more than that. Most laundry balls last around three years. So even if you factor in a box of baking soda and a gallon of vinegar, you’ll pay less than $15 a year for your laundry. In my house that is probably only a few months of laundry using conventional or green cleaners.

The fact that there are no phosphates or indeed anything else nasty coming out of the washing machine waste-water is simply an added bonus! Laundry Balls are quite a point of contention amongst lovers of green cleaning. Some (like myself) absolutely love them, while others claim they are not quite so effective. Normally those people have very hard water, and/or lots of horrendously dirty washing – sports kits and so on. For me, it doesn’t really matter. Even if you really cannot bring yourself to only use the Eco wash balls, it only takes a tiny sprinkle of baking soda or a dribble of green laundry detergent to make them work exactly as well, if not better than your ordinary green cleaner.

Summary and Final Thoughts

As you can see, there are nearly countless ways to improve your laundry system in your home and make it a green, eco-friendly experience. From green detergents, to detergent alternatives altogether, to dryer balls and more, there are plenty of options for you if you’re interested in making your home more green.

Try some of these options out and share your experience with others so that we can get the ball rolling on clean, green laundry!