![]() ![]() Although the detergent companies aren’t actively putting this contaminant into their detergents, it’s unfortunately a byproduct of their formulation process. For reference, according to the Citizens Campaign test results, detergents from brands like Tide, Gain, Persil, All, and Arm & Hammer all have 1,4-dioxane levels above the limit. It will be enacted by the end of 2022, banning sales of products with trace concentrations of 2 ppm or higher, and, by the end of 2023, 1 ppm or higher. In December 2019, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a bill that would “prohibit the sale of cosmetic or cleaning products containing 1,4-dioxane.” The bill came as a result of contaminated drinking water (1,4-dioxane) in Long Island. Tide Ultra Stain Release was also rated Best for Most Tough Stains by Consumer Reports. But, like our other picks, Tide Ultra Stain Release did a respectable job on most of them. (It also performed better than any other detergent on carbon, but we didn’t count the results from that stain in making our pick because we don’t think it’s as meaningful as the others.) No single detergent came out on top for all of our homemade stains. Tide Ultra Stain Release bested the competition on most of the stain strip, removing the most sebum, cocoa, and blood, and it was second best at removing the wine (after Persil). (Ingredients aren’t printed on the bottle, but P&G lists them online.) In our testing, those extra enzymes produced visibly better results, which were also borne out by the colorimeter measurements. And Tide Ultra Stain Release has the greatest number of enzymes of any detergent that P&G makes, a company representative told us. Surfactant expert Brian Grady (who was a project engineer at Procter & Gamble, parent company of Tide, from 1987 to 1989) explained to us that detergent prices largely reflect the number of different enzymes in their formulas. (Powder can have an especially hard time dissolving in cold-water washes.) Liquid detergent can also be used directly for pretreating stains. If you have ever started a load of laundry, walked away, and come back to find clumps of powder detergent or an undissolved pod among wet, dirty laundry, you can probably appreciate how foolproof liquid detergent is. One of their big advantages is that, unlike powder detergent and pods, they’re pre-dissolved. Liquid detergents are popular for a variety of reasons. ![]() Procter & Gamble told us that, according to a Nielsen report of sales from 20, 73% of products in the laundry category are liquid, 20% are pods, and 7% are powders. Not only did they perform better than powders and pods in our last round of testing, but they also account for the majority of what’s sold. For this round of testing, we decided to focus solely on liquid laundry detergents. Henkel employs about 47,000 people, and reported sales of $21.8 billion in fiscal 2013.There are three main types of laundry detergent: liquid, powder, and pods (called “unit-doses” by the industry, they’re also known as “packs,” “discs,” “single-dose,” or “tablets”). Henkel's consumer products include Purex detergent, Dial soap and Right Guard deodorant. The consortium is jointly managed by Arizona State University and the University of Arkansas. Henkel was a founding member in 2009 of the Sustainability Consortium, a partnership between corporations and universities to develop standards for assessing consumer product sustainability. In the past 11 years, Henkel said it has cut water and energy consumption by 51 percent and reduced waste by 47 percent per ton of production. "That is very much against consumer intuition in their purchasing decisions," He said. One of the marketing hurdles is that the shelf appearance of concentrated detergents in much smaller bottles is inferior to conventional detergents in large bottles, he said. Non-concentrated liquid laundry detergents contain 60 to 90 percent water, and a concentrated one could have 15 to 50 percent water, according to He. "The concentrated Purex liquid detergents also reduce the requirement of trucking transportation from our production sites to distribution centers and to retail stores," he said. Peter He, Henkel senior research fellow for sustainability, said reducing the water volume in Purex detergent will save as much as 30 million gallons of water annually. Procter & Gamble has also committed to a 25 percent cut in water for its liquid laundry detergents, including Tide and Gain. The initiative was highlighted at Walmart's recent Sustainable Product Expo in Bentonville, Ark. Henkel, a German company with its North American headquarters in Scottsdale, made the move to support Walmart's laundry-products compaction initiative. The consumer products giant Henkel has announced it will reduce the amount of water in its Purex laundry detergent by 25 percent over the next four years. ![]()
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