You don't have to sacrifice your suds when you switch to a greener dish soap!
Green Life Project is a weekly series of posts highlighting one change for readers to make in their life in order to gradually green their lives.
||Week Four||
This week’s Green Life Project action item is to purchase a green dish soap. This is yet another simple step toward a more sustainable you!
Where to start? Here are some broad, basic guidelines to use for a greener dish soap:
- First, try to get a dye-free, frangrance-free soap.
- Second, attempt to find a dish soap with plant-based surfactants, such as coconut-based ones.
- A third, related item to look for is essential oils in the ingredients.
- Fourth, you want a biodegradable soap.
- Fifth, choose a soap that has not been tested on animals.
Why change your soap?
You want to stop polluting our water and soil supplies with petroleum-based, chemically-loaded soaps! This is one small change to pollute less. Plus, you don’t want those fragrances to be in your home — they can act as endocrine interrupters–which may lead to cancer over time! So this is an environmental and health issue.
A recommendation:
Based on what I know about it, I would recommend to you Free and Clear Seventh Generation Liquid Dish Soap.
It boasts:
- Non-toxic & biodegradable
- Hypo-allergenic
- Free of phosphates
- Safe for septic & greywater systems
- Not tested on animals
- Kosher-certified
Check out our review of this product! Also, we have reviewed Method Brand Dish Soap.
We all wash dishes — and this is one of the simplest changes you can make! You already buy dish soap, so it’s as simple as shifting to a different product — with similar great results.
This doesn’t have to be a tough choice!
I was recently given a bottle of antibacterial dish soap branded, “Organic Kitchen by Upper Canada,” which has the aroma of mint and sage. I haven’t reviewed it or its ingredients thoroughly yet (but plan to!), however I can see by glancing through the list that its ingredients are far safer than the detergents I grew up with (like Palmolive!).
This sweet, “just because,” gift reminded me of the variety of greener options on the shelves in our markets — many from brands that we’ve never heard of — but are now gaining popularity! The more sustainable options all fall on the green spectrum, some use marketing fluff instead of green substance, so you have to be careful and know a little about ingredients, but in most cases these are better options than what we were using before. Armed with the short list of guidelines above, you’re on your way to a dish soap that is safer for you to use and for the environment!
This week, when you’re at the store, grab a bottle of greener dish soap. And carry it home in your reusable grocery bag!
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- Product Review: Method Dish Soap Check out our review of Method's Dish Soap - full...
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March 23rd, 2009 at 11:16 pm
Wesley, I have to admit that this was probably one of the very first things that I changed in my life on my quest for “greener” pastures. It was easy, required basically zero effort and got me thinking more about other “green” alternatives every time I did the dishes or washed my hands.
April 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm
[...] Week Four: Buy A Greener Dish Soap [...]