Cheap and Eco-friendly Dish Washing Soaps

When considering green or eco-friendly products for the home, one place that is often overlooked is what kind of dish washing liquid you use. There are a few eco-friendly dish washing soaps currently on the market now, and some of them are quite inexpensive. Some other eco-friendly products donate a portion of the purchase price to help environmental organizations making them even more of a green option to choose. They all clean your dishes almost exactly as well as more expensive and less environmentally sound dish washing products do.

A few months ago, a new green product came to my attention in a very unlikely place, namely, the local neighborhood Dollar Mart. The product is called Power X Green Natural Tropics Dish Washing Liquid. Natural Tropics is obviously natural, but it also uses no animal testing, is biodegradable, and comes in a bottle made from recyclable plastic, with a convenient flip cap lid. This eco-friendly dish washing liquid is free of any phosphorus or enzymes, and contains no bleach.

According to the label, this eco-friendly dish washing soap uses "anionic and...nonionic agents in a natural buffer system with water conditioning agent" so that "tough stains and grease easily rinse away..." In addition to this, if this dish washing product should ever be accidentally ingested, the only instruction is to drink a glass of water, and if it gets in your eyes, you should flush it out with water. As long as the product is not mixed with any kind of bleach or chlorine, this appears to be a perfectly eco-friendly dish soap.

The pleasant odor of Power X Green Natural Tropics Dish Washing Liquid is primarily composed of fresh coconut - not surprising, since it is a coconut based product - but there is also a hint of something sweeter, like bubble gum. It is quite sudsy and cleans well, on top of being an inexpensive and eco-friendly dish washing option. (For more details on my personal experience, go here.)

Dawn will currently donate $1 to wildlife conservation for each bottle that is purchased. The medical advisory on the bottle of Dawn is much the same as the Natural Tropics Soap, too - advising just to drink or flush with water. Dawn Dishwashing Liquid (which "takes grease out of your way") also contains similar biodegradable anionic ingredients, though they are not coconut based. Like the Natural Tropics Dish Washing Liquid, it should not be mixed with any sort of bleaching agent.