I found your blog entry while looking for information on eco-friendly laundry powders. I’ve been trying to find a new laundry detergent for some time now, because I want to avoid the thick plastic jugs my previous brand comes in. However, my quest for a new laundry detergent hasn’t been going well.

Most recently, I bought a box of Ecopath. What drew me to it was the ingredient list. The main ingredient is saponified babacu coconut oil, and the box says that the coconuts are harvested from the jungle where they grow wild. Given that most of the powders I’d looked at before contained palm oil produced on clearcut forest land, the Ecopath powder sounded really good. Another plus was that it came in a cardboard box so I thought I was avoiding plastic.

Unfortunately, when I opened the cardboard box, I found that within it the laundry powder is encased within a plastic bag. My first impulse was to write to the manufacturer and suggest eliminating the plastic bag, but I realize that that would require adding a lot more glue to the box so that the powder wouldn’t leak out, and I don’t have much sense of what the environmental impact of the glue would be and how it compares to that of a thin plastic bag. Do you have any information on this?

You can use Fels Naptha or Octagon soap; my local Food Lion sells Octagon soap for $.79 per bar. You might have to hunt for bars of laundry soap; the other two chains in my area don’t carry it.

Basically, to make laundry liquid out of the bar of soap, you grate the soap in a pot or bowl, pour hot water over the grated soap, and let it sit overnight; the next day, pour more hot water (it can be hot tap water, not boiling) over the now-soft soap and stir well. I used to make this up in a five-gallon bucket, so one bar of soap goes a long way.

Googling on the subject just now, I find there are recipes where you add Borax and/or washing soda to this mix. I may have to try that, just to see if I can tell the difference.

Thanks so much for submitting this letter and the other ones to the new Carnival of Trash. I’m very excited because the first edition has been published today and can be found at:

http://therubbishdiet.blogspot.com/2008/07/carnival-of-trash-1.html

These letters highlight the madness that exists out there. Thank you.

Seriously, I grew up with a Pyrex measuring cup on Mom’s laundry shelf.
Once I moved out and started contributing to the Quarter Economy (TM) at the laundromat I had an old sandwich box that held four washes worth of powder, and I eyeballed that.
Now I have a refillable jug for liquid detergent. the lid has markings, that I occasionally remark with a marker so I can actuallu see them, for various sized loads. Since buying the original jug (199-something), the appliance techs have developed HE front load washers, so I have new marks for that.
Should I ever go back to powder (I have used it, but made a solution so that the poweder dissolved in the machines) I will pick up an extra pyrex cup from the thrift.

And in reply to the #1 plastic being accepted – in my locality, #1 and #2 plastics are only accepted if they have a “neck” (top is narrower than the bottom) which really irks me.

I can say, because of you I am slowly getting plastic out of my life. Thank You.

You mentioned Ecover in your letter. I purchased a box of Ecover dishwashing tablets only to find that while the package is cardboard, each packet is wrapped in plastic. Do you have any suggestions?

FYI Tom’s of Maine wraps their soap in biodegradable plastic that I toss into the compost bin. I wonder if this would be a viable alternative for Ecover too?

I have no problems reading it through Google Reader, but when I try to go to the Blog itself to post a comment, I have to switch browsers (to Safari, which works fine) in order to view your posts on your Blog.

I don’t have this problem with other blogs I read, so it seems to be just yours. Maybe the layout? I’m getting the title bar and ads on the left side, and the navy blue Blogger bar at the top (that it puts on all Blogger blogs), and then just an empty window where your posts should be.