If you’re going to name your product ‘GreenWashBall’, you’d better make damn sure that it’s not, um, greenwashed. You’d think that the makers of this laundry detergent replacement product would have thought of that, but it seems they didn’t. Lighter Footstep had the opportunity to test the product out and found that it lives up to its name, and not in a good way.
The GreenWashBall claims that it can help you wash your laundry without detergent. It’s a green plastic ball filled with a handful of small round and cylindrical ‘powerful ceramics’ that supposedly “break water into smaller pieces increasing its speed and penetration factor.” According to the product website,
The powerful remote infrared rays emitted by GREENWASHBALL ceramics break the hydrogen molecules of water to increase molecular movement. This gives water a high penetration capacity and improves its washing properties.
The GREENWASHBALL emits negative ions which weaken the adherence of dirt on fabric so that it is easily removed without the use of detergent.
So, did it work? Lighter Footstep’s Chris Baskind chose some particularly gnarly laundry to put the GreenWashBall to the test, and was surprised to find that when the load was dry, everything was clean, smelled fresh, and was even light and fluffy. Then he started wondering whether it was really the GreenWashBall that did the trick.
My testing was unscientific, so I’m not saying that GreenWashBall doesn’t work. But I can think of at least one reason my clothes came out clean: I washed them. In detergent.
While we generally think of detergents in terms of the stuff we buy at the store, any compound used for cleaning is a detergent. That includes water — it suspends dirt until it can be rinsed away. Warm water introduces a surfactant effect, dissolving dirt and oils. We’re strongly conditioned by advertising to believe laundry cannot be cleaned except through the introduction of soaps and foaming agents.
Just for fun, I did a final load of laundry similar to that of the first batch. Using nothing but warm water, the results seemed identical to those with the GreenWashBall. Lesson learned. We can probably save money and turn out better quality laundry by reducing the amount of detergents we use.
After posting about it on Twitter, Lighter Footstep began receiving questions about the product like what kind of plastic it’s made from, what’s inside, and how does it really work. Those questions aren’t really answered on the product website or literature. And, the company even claims the GreenWashBall has anti-bacterial action, which they back up with a vague statement about “remote infared rays emitted by GreenWashBall”. Sounds fishy.
So it works the same as plain water, and it costs a whopping $39.99. That takes some greenwashing balls.
Link [Lighter Footstep]
