Cleaners and Grades

Wow! I never thought I would get so many pageviews! I hope that post about using detergent helps someone! And that if that someone needs help finding a new laundry detergent, I hope with helps you too!

When I was researching a better way to wash our cloth diapers, and I looked up detergents to try on EWG.com to see how the rated.

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) put out a data base of cleaners and their ingredients and graded them. From their website:

Environmental Working Group’s mission is to use the power of information to protect human health and the environment. EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning gives you practical solutions to protect yourself and your family from everyday exposures to potentially harmful chemicals. U.S. law allows manufacturers of cleaning products to use almost any ingredient they wish, including known carcinogens and substances that can harm fetal and infant development. And the government doesn’t review the safety of products before they’re sold. To fill those gaps, EWG’s staff scientists compared the ingredients listed on cleaning product labels, websites and worker safety documents with the information available in the top government, industry and academic toxicity databases and the scientific literature on health and environmental problems tied to cleaning products. They used that information to create EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning, which provides you with easy-to-navigate safety ratings for a wide range of cleaners and ingredients. (source)

I love checking out my cleaners. When we stopped making our own dishwasher detergent, we looked up different bands and the grade Seventh Generation got, made our decision easy. (Seventh Generation's Grade)

So when we were changing our cloth diaper wash routine, I looked up detergents to research. I took them to EWG.com to see how they were graded. 

I looked up Rockin' Green, and they weren't in the database, but it wasn't working for us, so I didn't really care to look up the individual ingredients.

The database has a few categories, one being laundry. When you are looking at just the laundry category, you can look at cleaners based on grade. I wanted to just look at detergents that ranked at least a "C" so I opened up a new tab for each grade, "A", "B", and "C". And then did some more research on the different brands and we decided to get Planet Laundry Detergent.

One of the most important things one our list was were we able to buy it local, We can buy Planet local and at a reasonable price. We also wanted a fragrance free detergent, and for it to be powder.

We also, picked a backup in case switching to Planet wasn't working. We decided on Arm and Hammer Perfume and Dye Free.

Here is a link the the grades for Planet, and the Arm and Hammer.

Some people claim that the EWG using arbitrary criteria for the grading scale, and if you feel that why, please read the info the EWG has, and do your own research. Always make the best decision for you, and your family. If you need to pick price over grading, that is ok, just make informed consumer decisions.