I messed up that link. Sorry! Here it is:

www.lifenatural.com/laundry-detergent.htm

But then again, come to think of it, you could just as easily rerinse detergent-washed clothes several times as well, by putting each load through a few complete cycles without adding detergent, just plain water, to rinse out all the detergent residues instead of the soap residue.

If anyone thinks that's a lot of extra work, remember that grandma, great-grandma, great-great-grandma, and so on back to the beginning of mankind, had to do all that by hand -- at least we have set-it-and-forget-it washing machines.  And we don't even have to boil the wash water over the fire anymore, either.  So stop whining.

Anyone using those laundry balls? I wonder if they really work.

Just to comment on re-rinsing the detergent washed clothes over and over--respectfully, this is an ENORMOUS waste of fresh water resources. Washing machines use 20-40 gallons of water per cycle, and then these flushed chemicals get into the fresh water supply, which is already massively stressed. The experts have been saying we have already reached "peak oil", and the supplies will be dwindling from here on out. Now they are sounding the alarm about "peak water". We could survive without oil. We CANNOT survive without clean, drinkable water.

And even if you did multi rinse your clothes to get the detergents out--it won't work. They have toxic chemicals called "optical brighteners" which semi permanently embed themselves in the garment to reflect more light and appear cleaner. You can't get them out.

Laundry detergents are the greatest environmental and health threat in the 21st century because they are simply everywhere, and everyone uses them. We have got to sound the alarm before it is too late and our water sources are beyond repair. Nobody should be forced to drink Nonylphenol Ethoxylate and all of the other toxic petrochemicals in detergent.  

I use Miracle Wash Laundry Balls .These ones are specially made for Australian Sales (no others are formulated this way) and contain :

No Sodium Lauryl Sulphate

No Petrochemicals

No Harsh Detergents

No Toxic Chemicals

No Animal Testing

They are environmentally friendly in every way and they save water too.

I have been using them for nearly 3 years & I have to say I AM IMPRESSED ! But the other great thing is they are fantatstic for travellers & easy to look after.My son used them for 2 years while he travelled through Europe and they were so handy.You can check them out here www.laundryball.com.au/index.php

but I expect you would find similar in most countries although probably not quite so clean & green as these.

Oops sorry but the link I provided for Aussie Brew Laundry Balls appears to be incomplete so here is another one in case you want to have a read about them.

To have a look at Miracle Wash Laundry Balls website and down load the FREE report on “What Harmful Chemicals are in Your Laundry Detergents”

click on this link…. www.laundryball.com.au/index.php

The detergent is bad, but what about the clothes themselves. Just try finding pure cotton clothing or fabric. It's not easy. All cotton bras are almost non-existent (gee, I wonder why breast cancer is increasing????) Pure cotton is not easy to care for either -lots of ironing. Some of the dies used for cotton are also made from petrol chemicals. Every time acrylics are washed they can potentially leach harmful chemicals.

Just goes to show that when we complain about one thing, it leads to complaining about a whole list of things. The one nice thing about changing to glass is you can find lots of it at resale shops and yard sales. As most people move to plastic because it's inexpensive and durable, they get rid of their glass and ceramic.

hey aemit...I have the laundry balls...they work GREAT!!

I second your request for information.  A search on "silicone" only turns up breast implants.

I live in Japan and in this particular area where I live, some time ago plastic became burnable trash which means that we can now throw all plastic items together with the other burnable stuff. Yes, in the plastic shopping bags. Then the whole thing is burned and I always wonder what happens to the remains after burning and there are probably filters and everything but how much also gets into the air, if any.

I also use my own bag for shopping and if not, then I use the plastic shopping bags for the trash.

HealthfulLee, why are you putting veggie & fruit scraps in the *garbage* in the first place? Have you no compost bin or pile? If your pets are fed a species-appropriate diet, their waste (and natural clay or corncob-based litters) can also go in the compost. Recycle everything else.

We recycle, compost, and burn our trash. We live in the country, so we can do that... unfortunately, the local yokels can burn their trash too, and they often burn mattresses, TVs, styrofoam, etc. along with all their plastic packaging, thus releasing plenty of PCBs and junk into the air for the rest of us to breathe. So much for country air being "clean" eh?

Point is, we recycle, compost, and burn (paper/cardboard/cotton only!!), and WE eat a lot of processed foods... the only thing in our "regular garbage" is plastic packaging that isn't recyclable, lids/caps, etc. If you didn't eat as much packaged food as we do, you could probably reduce your garbage to near zero, thus eliminating the need for plastic garbage bags to put your plastic garbage into. We take a pickup-truck load of trash to the landfill about once a year, for a grand total of about $8.00 (plus fuel, another $10).

We take our plastic shopping bags back for recycling, after using them at least once more to line our recycle bins. We're using reusable shopping bags too - but there's always those times when you forget to bring them...

If you bring all your groceries home in plastic shopping bags, you probably end up with more bags than you need to take out the garbage. You could take some reusable cloth bags to the grocery store and just accept a couple plastic bags to use for garbage.

Recycling plastic grocery bags is not an effective strategy, even though we have been led to believe it is. It costs $400 to recycle a ton of plastic bags that can be sold for $40 on the materials market. Since this does not make good economic sense, the bags that consumers have faithfully put into the recycling bin have been shipped to China, India, Nigeria, or whatever country is currently being used as a dumping ground for US waste. Not a pretty picture.

Compost bins, the enclosed tumbler type or something similar, are perfectly acceptable on a small city lot. I have two of them tucked into the trees and bushes so no one can find the sight offensive. It really cuts down on the garbage when you can compost all your produce trimmings.

Even though I always carry my cloth shopping bags, we still end up with a few plastic bags coming into the house-way more than I need for our one bag of garbage per week. Nothing that comes into the house gets out empty if it can hold trash-a large envelope that came in the mail, the bag the apples came in,the bag from the kitty litter, there is never a shortage of "containers." They are just a bit unconventional, but unconventional is my middle name, so that isn't a problem! If you give it a little thought, you will find that you don't need very many plastic bags. As the comedy group Firesign Theater said back in the early 70s, "We need to rid ourselves of the expediency complex."

And what matters is WHICH plastic.  It's NOT softened pvc giving off phthalates and it's NOT in contact with food, so it's probably okay.  Really.  Sometimes plastic's actually okay.