Laundry Detergent Ingredients
It is one thing to live a life where you advocate being environmentally conscious. It is quite another thing to live that life yourself. But in terms of your impact on the environment, going the "walk the walk instead of talk the talk" route does more to help mother earth stay clean than any high-minded speeches we listen to or say when we gather. However, when you share with your friends ways to live green, that is a good way to combine talking the talk with walking the walk.
The problem is that sometimes looking for the most environmentally conscious way to live takes extra work and sometimes it is more expensive. That principle is definitely true when it comes to integrating environmental issues in with how you do the laundry. If you were to read the ingredients for any of your average laundry detergents, you might think it was more the recipe for an explosive device than a soap.
That is one reason why it is the laundry that we may need to start our quest for green living. When you pour that scoop of detergent into the water to let it wash your clothing, you know that at the end of the cycle, when the load is done, that contaminated water is going out with the dirt and water into the environment. If you do 4-5 loads of laundry a week, that is a lot of contaminated water full of soap going down the drain.
We are fooling ourselves if we think that the average laundry soap that is sold at the local grocery store is environmentally safe. In day when being environmentally friendly is all the rage, if those detergents did live up to that standard, they would say so on the box. So maybe one good step to take that isn’t that big a sacrifice is just to buy laundry detergents that advertise as being environmentally safe products. That way you are patronizing detergent makers that support the environment and you feel less guilty about creating pollution just so you can have clean clothes.
We did learn a lesson from the diet products debate that many times just because something says it is low fat, that doesn’t mean it really is. People that make and sell products can change the boxes and labels of the products faster than they can change the product itself. And so it is a good idea to read the side panel to see if the ingredients in the detergent live up to the claims of being green that are listed on the box. One good place to start is to see who makes the detergent. If the soap is just antler version of detergent manufactured by a company that also makes all of the other detergents, you know their commitment to the environment is not very deep.
To be thorough, we should learn more about what ingredients are environmentally sound to use in the laundry and which ones are not. Then you are qualified to judge a detergent before you buy it and not have to just believe the advertising claims. Also going on the web sites of the major green detergent makers to read about their product can help a lot. The more you do to become an educated consumer and try to protect our planet in this way, the better. After all, mother earth takes care of us. It is the least we can do to return the favor.