Cheap, no big plastic bottles on the washing machine, your favorite scent included: making your own laundry detergent is popular. It fits in the trend of zero waste and sustainability. But what do your clothes and washing machine actually think of your homemade concoction?
Soda with soap, borax with pine needles, soap flakes with baking soda or chestnuts with water: Instagrammers, bloggers, and TikTokkers who want to live more sustainably and waste-free are happy to share their recipes for laundry detergents.
If you make your own detergent, you don’t have to keep throwing away those big plastic bottles and you avoid laundry powders with microplastics.
Mixing can release dangerous chlorine gas
Brewing your own detergent? If you ask a chemist, there are more reasons not to do it than to do it, says Paulien van Bentum, lecturer in chemistry practicals at Utrecht University.
The recipes you find online range from grating a bar of soap and mixing it with water and fragrance oil to mixing acid and hydrogen peroxide. “Dangerous chlorine gas can escape if you mix, for example, hydrochloric acid and hypochlorite.” For example, you cannot mix a descaler with bleach or hand sanitizer.
In addition, the effect of cleaning agents is less effective if you mix them together, says the chemist.
You need enzymes
A detergent consists of surfactants from enzymes, water, water softener, perfume and preservatives. The enzymes can break down the molecules of the stain into small pieces, which can then be carried away with the water.
“You need a number of enzymes in a detergent to break down different types of stains – such as grease, starch and the like – that can work at low temperatures,” Van Bentum explains.
But at home we cannot put enzymes in our homemade detergent. They are not for sale to the consumer. They are also not made by themselves, but are produced on an industrial scale and purified with the help of bacteria.
Soap is an excellent stain remover and water is an excellent solvent, says Van Bentum. But you really don’t get rid of old, deep and stubborn stains with it. A good stain remover chemically changes the structure of a stain, making it water-soluble.
Damage to your machine and clothing
With alternative remedies, the clothes may not really get clean, say the washing experts at washing machine manufacturer Miele.
Miele spokesperson Maarten Bos: “That’s a waste of your clothes and your time. It may also be that your laundry does get clean from a homemade home-garden-and-kitchen remedy, but that the chemical composition of the products or the combination thereof has a negative impact on your clothing. For example, certain substances can affect the fibers of clothing.”
Your washing machine can also become a victim. “Whether your laundry gets clean with alternative agents or not, oil, cleaning vinegar or lemon juice can damage your washing machine from the inside,” warns Bos. “For a clean and safe result, we advise washing with regular detergents. Be sure not to dose too much.”
Not everything is always clean
Such a detergent from the supermarket is quite impressive, says Van Bentum. It tackles many different stains on different types of textiles and you can count on most of it coming out of the drum spotlessly clean. But not everything: even with expensive bottles of detergent you can keep stains.
“Advertisements want you to believe that, but some stains are too deep in the textile fibers. The material of a stain adheres to the fibers. And if it is too deep, for example because you have rubbed hard in it, the dye can remain in it. The bacteria from a poop stain are gone, but the dye remains.”
You are not actually being green
Stained laundry in exchange for a good, green deed then? That also doesn’t really seem to be the case. The most important environmental gain is in washing at the lowest possible temperature, Milieu Centraal knows. A remedy with only soap will not get your laundry clean at 20 degrees.
That you are not contributing anything to the waste mountain if you start tinkering yourself is not entirely correct either, Van Bentum also thinks. “You buy many different products – packages of baking soda, bottles of oil – and you can never make it as concentrated as what you buy in the store.”
“What you make yourself is probably not long-lasting either. It will clump and mold and then you throw the jar away. You can leave detergent from the store for months.”
Refill stations and cold washing
Detergent manufacturers make very concentrated products, so you only need a little of it. Moreover, they also work at a very low temperature. “Manufacturers are trying to distinguish themselves and are therefore also thinking about the environmental impact of their detergent.”
This allows you to wash at increasingly lower temperatures. For example, Lidl is running a pilot with refill stations in some branches. Detergent brand Ecover also has such refill stations in various stores. The customer can walk in with an empty bottle and refuel themselves. “Such initiatives probably contribute more to less plastic use than making your own detergent.”