Product Review: The Great Dishwasher Detergent Challenge

A little over a year ago, I became the proud owner of a dishwasher for the first time since I lived with my parents. As anyone who regularly fights with their spouse over whose turn it is to do the dishes knows all too well, a dishwasher can help foster peace in a marriage. But I was soon to find that, in my determination to avoid phosphates and bleach, my dishes were going to need a good hand scrubbing anyway thanks to weak natural dish detergents. The fact that I need an unscented version thanks to my husband’s chemical sensitivities complicated matters even further.

Here are the dirty details about my experience with various brands, and the one that finally did what it’s supposed to do.

First up, Planet Automatic Dishwashing Detergent. I sometimes use other Planet products which, while never particularly impressive, did the job well enough. But, Planet dishwasher detergent was a huge disappointment. After every load, my dishes looked greasy and gross, requiring a second round in the sink. That’s a huge waste of water. I wanted to like it because of its many animal- and planet-friendly qualities, but it just plain didn’t work.

Seventh Generation Free & Clear Automatic Dishwashing Detergent is non-toxic, free of chlorine and phosphates and contains no dyes or artificial fragrances. Sadly, it didn’t work much better than Planet. I had to add washing soda for extra cleaning power, and even then my dishes just weren’t clean.

Bi-O-Kleen Automatic Dish Powder in Free and Clear specifically states that it’s kind to those with chemical sensitivities and allergies, and it’s also non-toxic and biodegradable. It was a definite improvement over the previous two, but unfortunately, it didn’t dissolve well, leaving little clumps of detergent all over my dishes and utensils, even when using vinegar as a rinsing agent. At this point, I was beginning to think my search for a natural dishwashing detergent was going to be fruitless.

Then, I happened upon Method Smarty Dish Detergent in Go Naked. 20 phosphate-free, bleach-free tablets come in a little plastic tub and one tablet is enough to actually – gasp – get an entire, fully packed dishwasher full of dishes sparkling clean. Sparkling! Best of all, a single tub lasts me over a month and costs me just $4.99 at Target. A clear winner.

So, don’t give up on natural dishwashing detergents even if you’ve been frustrated by them in the past. Method Smarty Dish definitely lives up to all that it claims.

Green Gear Review: SuperBattery Hand-Crank Gadget Charger

You’re in the middle of nowhere, miles from a gas station, and your car breaks down. You pull out your cell phone to call AAA and – oh, great – it’s dead, too. What, exactly, do you do in this scenario? Well, if you’ve got a Datexx SupeBattery hand-crank gadget charger, you simply pull it out and start cranking. After a few minutes, you’ll have enough juice to power your cell long enough to make the call.

The SuperBattery can charge up to 1,200 different devices, including cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras and handheld game consoles. Two minutes of cranking gives you six minutes of talk time on your phone or 50 minutes use of the built-in flashlight – just enough for emergency situations. It can also be used as a portable charger for camping trips and other situations in which a wall outlet is not available – just charge it up with the AC adapter before you leave and bring it with you.

I decided to test out the SuperBattery with my iPod, to see just how well it met these claims. I brought it with me on a long day hike and when my iPod power started getting low, I plugged it into the fully charged SuperBattery and got approximately 4 extra hours of play time.

Later, when the SuperBattery charge was up, I tested the hand-crank function, turning the crank for about two minutes. I hooked it up to my iPod and, indeed, got right about two minutes of listening time before the charge wore out.

The caveat: Datexx recommends always keeping your SuperBattery fully charged, which means constantly leaving it plugged in to an electrical socket when not in use, to prolong the battery’s life cycle. It does meet EnergyStar requirements and consumes very little electricity, but for people who are trying to cut back on the amount of gadgets plugged in around their homes, this might be a no-go.

However, the SuperBattery does successfully harness a source of renewable energy that we sometimes overlook: the power of our own strength. For an average cost of $35, the SuperBattery is definitely worth the cash to have a relatively green gadget charger on hand at all times.

Link [Datexx SuperBattery]

Review: The Wonder Wash & Spin Dryer by Laundry Alternative

If you’re off-grid, living on the road or just trying to go green in as many ways as possible, you’ve probably grappled with the best ways to do your laundry without slaving over it for hours on end. Getting clothes and household linens thoroughly clean and dry while using as little water and energy as possible is challenging, to say the least – but two products from Laundry Alternative can help make your life a little easier and your laundry routine a whole lot greener.

The Wonder Wash is a compact, portable hand-powered washing machine that doesn’t even have to be hooked up to a sink. Here’s what the company had to say about it:

• Washes a 5-lb. load super clean in just a couple of minutes.
• Has a patented pressure system that forces detergent into the fabric at high speed for a fast, efficient, economic and very easy wash
• Is ideal for campers, single persons and even for the housewife with small frequent loads like hand washables and diapers.
• Is ideal for delicates such as woolens, silks, knitted dresses and cashmere garments.
• Uses far less water than even hand washing.

The Wonder Wash is essentially a plastic bin with a pressure lid, a stand, a handle and a drain spout. You put warm or hot water in the drum, add soap and then put in your laundry. Once the lid is properly in place, the air inside the drum absorbs the heat of the water and expands, creating pressure inside the drum. That pressure forces the detergent through the fabric, reportedly 100 times faster than you could do it by hand or in a conventional washing machine.

The Laundry Alternative website said that it can fit 7-8 dress shirts, 10 t-shirts, 30 pairs of socks or 2-3 pairs of blue jeans. I decided to test this claim and stuffed it with 3 pairs of my husband’s cargo pants, figuring they were the bulkiest items I had on hand and possibly the toughest to clean. They fit in pretty easily, and turning the handle was not exactly a Herculean task. I set the Wonder Wash up next to my kitchen sink and turned the handle for just three minutes. Then I drained it with the attached drain spout, filled it up with more water and spun the handle a few more times to rinse and drained it again. I must admit I was pretty surprised when the pants, which had been pretty nasty from yardwork, came out clean.

Of course, they were also sopping wet. The Wonder Wash doesn’t wring water from fabrics like a conventional washing machine does, so you’re either in for a whole lot of hand-wringing – or you can use the Spin Dryer, made by the same company.

From the Laundry Alternative website:

• Works in only 2-3 minutes
• 12.2 lb capacity for wet laundry, 5.5 lb capacity for dry laundry
• 3200 rpm spin speed
• Portable, only weighs 22 lbs
• Compact, only 13.7″ x 13.7″ x 24″ (lwh)
• Much gentler on clothes than a conventional tumble dryer
• Removes mineral deposits and detergents, rather than baking them on
• Can be used as a standalone dryer, or with a tumble dryer
• If used with a conventional tumble dryer, cuts drying time by 30 minutes or more, significantly reducing energy costs and prolonging the life of your dryer and clothing
• Connects to any 110V outlet, no installation required.

It did, in fact, get the pants even drier than they would normally be coming out of a conventional washing machine, and it only took three minutes. You can then either throw the load into your regular dryer for vastly reduced overall drying time or hang them up to dry (which is obviously the greenest solution).

These products are small enough to fit in your VW bus, tiny ass apartment or wherever you call home. While the size means you can’t do huge loads – forget fitting a comforter into either one – it does make them super portable. I find the size of the Wonder Wash to be just fine for the amount of laundry my husband and I produce (which isn’t much). The Wonder Wash would also be great for parents who’d like to keep their baby’s clothes – or dirty cloth diapers – separate from their own laundry, particularly since it’s so gentle on the clothes.

You can even use the Wonder Wash in your backyard and dump the grey water into your garden afterward (assuming you’re using phosphate-free laundry detergent or none at all, of course).

All in all, these are great products that make it much easier to have an eco-friendly laundry routine that doesn’t require a return to the methods of the 1800’s. Oh yeah, and the prices are super reasonable, too – $42.95 for the Wonder Wash and $134.95 for the Spin Dryer. You’ll make the money back in months with all the water and energy you’ll save.

Link [Wonder Wash] + [Spin Dryer]

Source Toothbrush Now Available in Flax and Recycled Currency

I’m in love with my Source toothbrush. It’s ergonomic, it’s made of 93% recycled materials and it’s got a replaceable head. We’ve professed our affection for this toothbrush before on EarthFirst (read our review, “The Awesomely Rad Source Toothbrush is Made of Unicorns and Rainbow Sprinkles”) and now it’s gotten even better with two new material options: flax and recycled currency.

The replaceable head represents just 7% of the total product, and while the bristles are made of virgin nylon, it’s a huge improvement over throwing a whole toothbrush away every few months (and the Source bristles also last up to three months longer than those of most other toothbrushes).  The packaging is made of SmartCycle plastic, derived from 50% recycled plastic bottles. Radius, maker of the Source, is currently working on a new plant-based packaging that will be fully compostable and the backing will be post-consumer recycled cardstock.

Now, if only I could convince Radius to use this concept to create razors. Seriously, why hasn’t anyone done that yet? How hard is it to give us some kind of green recycled handle that we can use with replacement blades? These ones by Preserve are okay but I want something similar to the Source. Get on it, somebody.

Link [Radius] via [Re-Nest]

Lighter Footstep Dissects the ‘GreenWashBall’

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]

Twist & Spout: Greenwashed Plastic Spout to Reuse Soda Bottles

A product called the ‘Twist & Spout’ aims to extend the usefulness of plastic bottles. It’s a screw-on spout that can turn, say, a 2-liter soda bottle into a watering can. The concept of turning a plastic bottle into something useful is a great idea, since plastic is piling up all over the world like a plague – except, the Twist & Spout is made of (new) plastic. Huh. Yeah.

GreenUpgrader first noticed the problem with this idea, saying:

The spout could be used for the obvious, such as watering the garden or perhaps attending to the family fish bowl. However, since this thing is made of plastic and aids in the consumption of plastic bottles (which the Twist and Spout requires for its function) does this really do the environment any good?

So, let’s get this straight: for $8, you can get one twist & spout that will allow you to reuse plastic bottles a few times until you start to get nervous that you’re pouring chemical- and bacteria-laced water into your pet’s water dish, or onto your tomato plant. $8 that you could have spent on non-plastic watering can that will last virtually forever.

Noble idea, bad execution. How about making the spout out of recycled materials instead of new plastic?

You tell me – do you think it makes sense? Would you buy it?

Link [re:modern] via [Green Upgrader]
Photo credit: WorldWideFred