awesome: washnuts.

I've been using washnuts for my laundry for around 2 years now and I'm pretty satisfied with it! Over two years, I bought around 2 or 2,5 kg of them (I think...) and still got way more than 1 kg left. At a price of 5 EUR / kg they're the cheapest and most environmentally friendly detergent I've ever come across. That makes a mere 5 EUR a year for laundry detergent! Granted, I only have to wash my own clothes and not a whole family load, but still... most of the common detergents cost more than this for a single bottle or box!

They're awesome because:

• they can be used for various purposes: dishwashing, laundry, wool scouring and even washing your hair
• they are hypo-allergenic (so if you're sensitive to certain chemicals, this is for you!)
• they don't leave any scent on your laundry (I hate intense artificial scents! If I feel in the mood for some olfactorial input, I just add a few drops of scented oil to the water, like rose, lavender or sandal wood)
• a little goes a long way, about 3-5 half shells are enough for one cycle (200 cycles per kg is a very,very conservative estimate), and you can even re-use them several times before they have released the last bits of saponin (the substance that makes soap so effective for cleaning).
• they are compostable (so they'll turn into soil wherein you can grow new things... even your own washnut tree, they cope very well in moderate climate like ours!)
• oh yeah, best thing? They produce near to no foam at all! (I spend most of my time getting the foam OFF the stuff I'm cleaning, when I'm using conventional detergents...)

itty bits of foam.

I have heard some negative things about their toxicity, washnut lovers say they are non-toxic, critics say that the saponins in there are not better than what's in your common detergent, in terms of degradability. I'm not an expert on this and would love some input from someone who knows more about chemicals than me.

Also, because they have no additional bleaching agents like conventional stuff has, some people complain about their white laundry becoming dull over time. But that's not really a concern for me. I simply couldn't be bothered to care about the shade of white in my clothes.

From another standpoint, it might not be wise to ship something around the globe and to make it's price unaffordably high for the local people (who in turn might switch to the cheaper, more toxic detergents) because of the increasing international demand for this product. If I can manage, I'll grow my own washnuts at some point to get this off my mind ;)

So while there are still some disadvantages to consider for some people, I wouldn't go back to the plastic-bottled, petro-chemical mess I was using before. Oh and while we're at it, if you understand german, here's a eye-opening movie about plastics and their toxic ingredients for you :) A while back, I still was somewhat amused about certain people's vigorous hatred for plastic (while I never was a plastic fangirl either), but recently (may it be due to my plans for sustainable small scale off the grid living or just because the movie had some info that was news to me... I don't know.)

(PS: the only uploader I could find with decent movie quality was ChemTrailPetition and I find that nick kind of suspicious. I'm not really into conspiracy theories, just for the record :D)