Laundry is endlessly fascinating. Since finding out that up to 80% of environmental impacts are accrued at the
use phase I have become interested in finding out more about washing and laundry. There are a few ways of reducing impacts of washing, wash less, wash at cold, line dry, which have all been easy to incorporate into my routine. Now I'm starting to experiment with different laundry detergents. I heard soap nuts were pretty good so I ordered some to see what all the fuss was about.
According to Soap in Nutshell, these Indian relatives of lychees contain a natural active agent 'saponin', which releases suds on contact with water. I ordered
a bag and it turned up 2 days later. Excited to see if these nuts could actually wash clothes I tipped tomato sauce, olive oil and soy on a white tea towel and chucked it in with a load.
The following photos document the process
- Tomato, soy and olive oil
I was expecting suds to appear in the washing machine, so I was disappointed that there weren't any bubbles. I wasn't quite sure about the tomato sauce shadow staying, I've used other detergents that haven't gotten stains out, so I think the activeness of the soap nuts is on par with other supermarket brands.
The instructions said to warm wash at 40 degrees or 60 degrees for very dirty loads, but because I am concerned about energy consumption in heating water, I washed at cold. This is especially relevant in Melbourne where we are still powered by coal, so it's better, environmentally, to save on power emissions than worry about chemical effluent. Having said that, if you can do both, and it seems like you can with soap nuts, then great. Soaking them before washing with them at cold is meant to work better, I'll try this next time.
I put my hand in the water with the soap nuts in it and my hands had that freshly lathered feel afterwards. My clothes felt soft and clean, and there wasn't any residual dirt on them. I felt that the soap nuts were successful in getting 'normal' dirt off clothes, and my laundry felt and smelt clean.
My verdict? Cheap, eco way to wash light to medium soiled clothes. Green light.