Like other producers, Charlie’s is unwilling to provide their exact ingredients, and would only say this when I probed them further: “Our formulas are what make us special. ĭo You Need a Special Detergent for Baby Clothes?Ĭharlie’s Soap is the perennial favorite on tons of natural living blogs, and having used their powder formula, I can attest to its effectiveness. phosphates, which break down minerals and render detergent more effective, but with harmful environmental ramifications.bleach, which contains chlorine (an environmental toxin–and possibly a carcinogen and endocrine disruptor).optical brighteners, which are often made from benzene, a definite carcinogen.fragrance, which usually contains phthalates.phenols (established endocrine disruptors, of which BPA is the most notorious).synthetic detergents, which are often made of petrochemicals.Conventional laundry detergent generally contain the following: What Are the Ingredients in Tide?īecause of “trade secrets,” manufacturers are not required to disclose what’s in their laundry detergent, so the ingredient list is usually vague and not very helpful. The ill effects of some of the chemicals in detergents range from skin or eye irritation to possibly much more serious, such as endocrine disruption (some ingredients are even considered potential carcinogens, but I’m not going to suggest that if you don’t give up your Tide you’ll get cancer). And they've got our thanks for doing it.All laundry detergents leave a residue on clothing, which is absorbed by our skin (and inhaled). EWG does continual re-grading efforts and recognizes the improvement we are making. Over the years we have removed borate/boric acid from our products and that has helped improve our scores on this database. We're still looking, but until we find it it's either a tiny bit of methylisothiazolinone or products that could be contaminated with microbes. We've been searching for a plant-based preservative that is safe and effective and to date, we haven't been successful finding one. (Natural microbes love to eat our plant-based ingredients!) EWG gives this ingredient a D, though it meets our rigorous safety and environmental standards (minus the fact that it's synthetic). There's also the sticky wicket of methylisothiazolinone, a synthetic preservative used to maintain freshness in our plant-based products. This discrepancy can sometimes lead to a little confusion. It seems the biggest issue is that EWG interpreted the terms "Essential Oils," "Botanical Extracts," and "Preservatives" on our ingredients lists as "incomplete disclosure" when in fact those terms are supplied in addition to the exact oils, extracts, and preservatives we use. But what's dragging our average down? Our in-house green scientists shed some light on things. So on a bell curve, we're still at the head of the class. You can just imagine the interoffice anticipation when we logged in to find that while more than a third of our products receive "A" grades, others were graded from B-F."įirst, 37% of our stuff got an A, a grade awarded to only 3% of the nearly 2500 products rated. That's where their amazing guides come in. Like us, they believe too many products hide their ingredients and that consumers have a right to know what's inside of them. The good people at the Environmental Working Group have been kindred spirits in the effort to get companies to disclose the ingredients they use in their products.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |