Wednesday, September 9

Which phosphate free dishwasher detergent do I use?

A while back I wrote a post titled Why Phosphate Free? one of the comments/questions I received on that post was:

Eco Yogini said...
excellent advice. What kind of dishwasher detergent do you use?


The answer:
I am a huge fan of this detergent! I pop one cute little cube in the main dishwasher compartment, ensure the rinse aide is filled with white vinegar, and ta-da...spotless glasses, clean plates, spotless silverware. (I will say that my dishwasher is not the best so I do rinse my dishes before I put them in the dishwasher but I use to do this when I used Cascade too but then I would still get spots on the glasses and silverware. I hate spots. Oops, sorry for the digression)

Here is what Method has to say about Smarty:

***Instead of the nasty phosphates and bleach that make up conventional dishwasher detergent, smarty dish is made from super effective ingredients so green that one of them won a presidential green chemistry award (yes, that really is an award).

***The blend of mineral cleaning salts, anti-spotting agents and enzymes give smarty dish some serious kick, while the biodegradable and non—toxic ingredients mean no harmful residues or fumes to worry about in your home… and happy fish after they rinse down the drain. The formula is DfE-recognized, with packaging made from 25% recycled plastic. What’s more, smarty dish is specially formulated to be effective yet gentle on glass and flatware to prevent etching.

Ingredients:
  • mineral cleaning salts
  • starch + protein cleaning enzymes
  • naturally derived + non—toxic anti-spotting agents
  • cellulose-derived coating + binder
  • surfactant
  • seaweed-derived dispersing agent

***Finally, a non-toxic dishwasher detergent that really works. Fully loaded with naturally derived, biodegradable ingredients, smarty dish doses clean dirty dishes without dirty chemicals, like phosphates and bleach. No dirty chemicals means no nasty stuff down the drain (and no dirty conscience). Smarty gets rid of baked-on food and grease as well as, and sometimes better than, the leading brands (it took us a few tests that told us so). All without the toxic stuff that a lot of the other guys use. So we think smarty deserves extra credit. And we might put one of those “my kid is an honor student” bumper stickers on our car. But that’s just us.

Don't you just love humor in advertising?

If you look closely around my house you will see smarty containers in just about every room in our house. When I use the last smarty I pop the container into the dishwasher and then reuse it; my children's rock collection, my daughter's hair accessories, misc garage items, etc....

I was actually kind of sad when Method recently switched from this container to a bag.

Thanks for the question Eco Yogini!

Now you tell me, what phosphate free detergent do you use?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would like to honor all of the hard work you put into Over Coffe with the Kreativ Blogger Award. You can read more about it on my post and feel free to participate or not. Thank you Lena for all the great tips and ideas you share here and all your support of Green Gigs!

Eco Yogini said...

Thank you so much for answering my question!! :) And so well. I've never heard of Methods dish detergent capsules, they do sound very 'green'.

Someday we will have a dishwasher... someday. :)

Again, thank you very much!

Over Coffee - the green edition said...

You are very welcome. I know that Method sells dish soap too but I haven’t tried it….yet. I think I would cry without a dishwasher….how spoiled am I ;-)

Over Coffee - the green edition said...

Thank you so much for the kind words and reward! I aprreciate them both!

anna said...

thanks for the call out lena! i will be tweeting this and maybe facebooking it. do you have a twitter handle?

-anna @ method

Over Coffee - the green edition said...

Your welcome Anna! You know how much I love Method. Whenever you open an Oregon office you know who to call first ;-)

I don't have a twitter handle....yet.

Lisa said...

I use Method's liquid soap for hand washing and rinsing but I use 7th Gen for dishwasher. Mostly because I like that it comes in cardboard.

Over Coffee - the green edition said...

Wow cardboard. That is so cool. I never realized that. I will have to check it out. ;-)