The Duc Pond

I’ve been looking into eco-friendly phosphate-free laundry detergents. The most well known is probably the Seventh Generation line of products, available at Whole Foods but also online too. They work with normal and high efficiency (e.g., front load) washing machines. Phoshates, as you may know, promote algae growth, and as you may also know, large algae blooms in oceans and lakes kill aquatic life. The eco-friendly detergents are also petroleum free, and free of other wacky chemicals.

Consumer Reports rates Seventh Generation in the middle of the pack, but considering most of us don’t have kids and work in clean offices, it’s probably not a big deal. You can always keep that bottle of Tide around for the heavy duty cleaning. Any reduction helps. I used to use Purex because it was always on sale, and it cleaned fine despite being among the worst in Consumer Reports. Seventh Generation beats that handily, so I’m sure it works fine.

Same goes for dishwasher detergent. In this category, Consumer Reports rates an eco option, Ecover Ecological (powder or tablet form, also available at Whole Foods or online), pretty damn high. Third best in fact, above names like Cascade and such. Also high is Trader Joe’s powder (not so much the gel), which is cheaper. Effective AND non-evil.

Amazon.com and Drugstore.com have great prices on some of these products.

I started looking into this because I recently got a Whirlpool Duet WFW9200SQ front load washer (and the matching gas dryer). Besides cleaning better and being more gentle on clothes, front loaders use far, far less water than traditional top loaders (there are high efficiency top loaders out there, like the Whirlpool Cabrio). It was actually disconcerting at first, since there’s no standing water at all. Only enough water is injected to get the clothes wet and no more. Everything came out clean, though, so I can attest to their efficacy.

Front loaders don’t just save water, they also save the natural gas (or electricity) used to heat that water. It’s the eco-sensitive way to go!