For quite a while I've bought a laundry liquid labeled as 'green', although I've never really been satisfied with the list of chemicals in it. Just because something is derived from a natural product, or is biodegradable, doesn't automatically make it safe in my book. Then I read this article about 'greenwashing' (click on 'show transcript to get the full article), which is basically how companies use key phrases to make their products seem more green. It's a fascinating reading, and just confirmed what I was already thinking. Since we have a biological home treatment plant, with all the water being pumped by drip irrigation to my fruit trees, what we put into that system is of even more concern to me. Unfortunately it seems that as in many cases, the only way you can be sure of what your getting, is to do it yourself.
Rhonda over at Down to Earth has this recipe for home made laundry liquid on her webpage. Personally I'm not too happy using borax. It's one of those natural, but not really safe chemicals to me, and anyway, it's a no-no for septic systems. So I cut that out. Washing soda, which is basically a salt, I didn't really want to put in either, and after looking around the web, it's mainly used for softening hard water. Since we have tank water, it's about as soft as it gets, so I figured I didn't really need it anyway. That leaves... um... soap and water. Nice and basic. I bought the el cheapo home brand washing soap, and from memory, it was less than $2 for 4 bars. I'm not completely happy with it, since it still has fragrances etc added, but it was all I could find. Once this packet runs out, I'll use my own home made soap (which is another post for another day).
Anyway, it's really simple to make. Basically, you grate a cake of soap, put it into a saucepan with 1.5 litres of water, and cook it until the soap all dissolves. (Watch it carefully, it boils over really easily, although it's just as easy to clean off the stove. I was distracted making origami paper water bombs at the time.) Then add that to a bucket with about 8 litres of water in it, and mix it all up. That's all there is to it.
I store it in this plastic 10 litre lidded bucket that I bought for $2 at the markets. It used to hold yogurt. Then I put about 2 litres at a time into a leftover plastic bottle from my last lot of commercial laundry liquid, and use a capful at a time in the machine. It goes quite thick initially, then thins down and becomes globby after a while. Not sure if that was because I didn't dissolve the soap well enough, or because I didn't add all the washing sodas and stuff to it. It works fine though, and the clothes come out just as clean as they always did. (Which isn't that clean, given that I have a 4 year old in the house). It works out at about 10c for a 2L bottle, so you certainly can't argue with the price! And best of all, it's just soap, so no worries about it going down the drain.
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