I just spent a year of trying various eco-friendly dish soaps to wondering if eco-friendly soaps were any better for the environment than conventional soaps. After all this research and number crunching, I still haven’t figured out a way to please my pocketbook and the planet. With even the SDA claiming that there is no environmental advantage to using “eco-friendly” soaps, perhaps the best solution is to stick with a concentrated conventional liquid that will keep some plastic bottles out of the recycling bin.
But what if you want to use something more natural, less toxic, unscented, or just . . . less mainstream? Here are a few more alternatives to liquid dish soap:
Use bar soap. Life Less Plastic has a post about using Dr. Bronner’s bar soap instead of dish soap, thus avoiding plastic packaging.
What about Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap? I didn’t try it because it seemed to cost more than any other “eco-friendly” soap out there, even in large quantities. A gallon of it costs $39.99 on Amazon.com. That’s $.31 an ounce! So 25 ounces of it would cost $7.81-almost twice as much as other eco-friendly soaps. If it’s truly super-concentrated, perhaps it ends up being cheaper than other soaps on the market, but I have my doubts. After all, every brand I tried claimed to be super-concentrated.
Use baking soda and vinegar. My husband was aghast at my admission that I washed an entire sink full of dishes with baking soda. He said it just can’t be done. (Note: my husband is not a scientist, but he did take organic chemistry once.) Based on my reading, when baking soda mingles with grease, it has a saponifying effect–that is, it turns to soap and dissolves the grease.
It seemed to work. I put some baking soda in a bowl, added a bit of water to form a paste, and scrubbed my dishes with the paste. Then I rinsed all the dishes and put them in the rack to dry. They dried with a powdery glaze on them, so I then tossed them all in another basin of water with a little bit of soap.
- Pros: The dishes came out cleaner and shinier than ever, so the baking soda/tiny bit of dish soap combo worked even better than plain dish soap.
- Cons: I used about twice as much water and spent about twice as much time washing my dishes. I may continue experimenting with this method. Supposedly if I combine the baking soda scrub with a vinegar rinse, my dishes will come out nice and clean.
Make your own dish soap. In the comments section of our Eileen’s Pet Peeves post, Eileen posted a recipe for dish soap she found from the book Homemade, published by Reader’s Digest.
Homemade Dish Soap Recipe
1/4 cup soap flakes
1 1/2 cups hot water
1/4 cup glycerin
1/2 teaspoon lemon oil
Make the soap flakes by grating a bar of ivory with a cheese grater. Pour soap flakes into hot water. Stir until dissolved. let sit for 5 minutes. Stir in glycerin and lemon oil. A loose gel will form as it cools. Use a fork to break up any congealed parts and put it in a squirt bottle.
Eileen goes on to explain that you used to be able to find soap flakes in the store, but now they’re hard to find, so you have to make your own with a natural bar of soap.
And here’s a whole slew of green cleaner recipes, including dish soap, on Oregonmetro.gov.
Have you found a way to avoid dish soap entirely, allowing you to stop contributing to the production and disposal of all those plastic bottles? Let us know!
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October 24th, 2008 at 6:57 am
I tried using Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap as dish detergent, and it didn’t work well at all.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:01 am
I’m not sure how well it would work for washing dishes, but we use Dr. Bronners in the showers & for the baby in a foaming pump dispenser, I literally add a few tablespoons per 16 oz of water, so it lasts forever. I’m going to try it with the dishes now & see how it works….
October 24th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I am almost down to my last bit of dawn (from a large bottle bought 3 years ago at Costco) and I’m getting ready to make the homemade dish soap. I’m going to try it two ways – one with a bar of Ivory and then with a bar of the Dr. Bronner’s. I’ll let you know how it works. Here’s a downer though – many of the ingredients we consider natural are on the “bad” list at the skin-deep website. Like glycerin! How irritating. I’m using it anyway. I love the baking soda/vinegar idea – so simple and cheap! Since I have a dishwasher, I use the dish soap mainly for pots and pans, but it still seems like there is plenty that needs to be hand-washed every day!
October 24th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Cathy, thanks for justifying my non-purchase of Dr. B’s! Rebecca, please let us know what you think of washing dishes with it.
Eileen, what is wrong with glycerin?! I can’t believe it took you three years to get through one bottle of Dawn, considering how many bottles of “eco-friendly” stuff I’ve gone through in just one year (seven, for those keeping track). Luckily I did find a way to cut down on my dish soap, which I will reveal in next Wednesday’s post. (My FINAL dish soap post, I swear!)
October 25th, 2008 at 3:19 am
Rebecca, it was the costco size bottle and I used it to re-fill a smaller bottle. It must have been over a gallon. And I have a dishwasher so I only use it for washing pots and pans (except for the 9 months last winter when the dishwasher wasn’t working and I decided to see how it went not fixing it.)
November 24th, 2008 at 5:17 am
I backpack, and when I’m out I use ashes, or fine silt/sand to clean my pot and utensil. (Ashes are preferable, because they are only mildly abrasive (I always step away from the stream to wash and rinse the dishes. Afterwards I discard the water and cleaning agent into the woods so the earth will filter it before it reenters the water system.) Sometimes if ashes, silt/ fine sand, isn’t available I use leaves. OK, maybe not an option for everyday household dish washing, but I’ve been wondering about utilizing diatomaceous earth for dish washing. I lived overseas for a couple years. The family I lived with used a sort of clay to clean their dishes…got me thinking…
January 23rd, 2009 at 9:15 am
Hello. I’ve been using baking soda and vinegar to wash my dishes for the last couple months. I fill the sink with water, pour in some baking soda (I don’t measure, but maybe 3 Tablespoons or so), and pour in some vinegar (about 1/4 cup?). The dishes come out sparkling clean!
I have a problem with the dishwasher though. No matter what I do, white powdery film builds up on my dishes. I’ve used Glass Magic, and it works wonderfully, but I worry about the environmental impact and the toxicity of it. But I absolutely can not find anything else that removes the film.
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Don’t give up on Dr. Bronner’s yet!!!
I don’t recommend the bar or liquid, though.
The product that works very well for washing dishes AND laundry is Dr. B’s Sal Suds. Online you can purchase a gallon for under 30$. You can likely find it in your health food store or have your local vitamin shoppe order site-to-store for free.
Here’s the scoop.
I use 1 oz for laundry in my front loading washing machine and have fresh, clean clothes every load. I dilute 1/2 sal suds and 1/2 water for my hand dishwashing. It is fantastic. It is expensive inititally but extremely concentrated and goes a lot further than any other product I’ve used. The biggest perk is that it is completely biodegradable/no petrol and the ingredients are ALL listed on the package. It smells like pine, but not overwhelmingly and it goes away when dry. That’s all I have to say about that!!
May 26th, 2010 at 12:30 am
I’ve been using bar soap to was dishes for a few years. It works fine, but I have a part-time housekeeper who wants commercial dish soap that comes in (ugh) plastic bottles, which is why I’m researching this. Thanks for your tips.
August 30th, 2010 at 5:49 am
I am looking for…..THE liquid formula. How do they make the base, the liquid
SOAP, not the bars or flakes or Dr. whats his names soap? I want to make
my own. I am sorry if I sound ungrateful but all the recipes say to start
with soap. I want to MAKE my OWN soap. I would appreciate it if anyone
knows of a recipe they would like to share. Thank you very much. *-* K