How Do I Wash my Clothes: Part 2 Greenscents

When it comes to washing clothes, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong for the environment. If we’re wanting to make our clothes washing more eco-friendly, one of the simplest and easiest changes to make is what we wash our clothes in. We’ve looked at the simplest swaps we can make, Ecover and Method, but as discussed in the review last week – they aren’t perfect. Better options could be out there.

And in fact lots of options are out there. The ‘eco-laundry’ market is pretty swamped with small scale companies propping up the shelves of local health and wellness shops with their own ‘special’ blends of (mostly) nice to nature ingredients. One such company is ‘Greenscents’. Greenscents are a small company based in Somerset that are relatively new to the eco scene and offer a whole host of cleaning bits and bobs (all beautifully listed on their website https://greenscents.co.uk/). They’re owned by the original lady who set them up, and they stand out to me because not only is their laundry liquid an ‘ethical consumer best buy’ (along with a lot of the eco-laundry market to be honest), but they are also certified by the soil association (unlike a lot of the eco-laundry market). I thought if we’re going to be going out of our way to use a ‘good’ washing liquid, then it at least needs to be the best possible option and a soil association badge is nothing to sniff at.

The real question of course, though, is is it any good and is it worth getting over a normal washing liquid or the ecover/method blockbusters? Well, let me help you decide with my honest review of Greenscents. The box just below has more detail about how the review scoring works, and if you’re pushed for time there’s a 30 second summary at the bottom of the page. Now, onward!

Using it – does it work

It really does, although there are a couple issues. First off though, we need to take a moment to recognise how gloriously beautiful the bottle is – look at it!

And not only is it pretty, it does indeed clean stuff. I’ve done several washes with it and haven’t noticed anything different in performance to ecover or method. I even washed our dog blankets, and some horrifically muddy old gaiters and both came out fresh as a daisy! However, it’s not a miracle cleaner, a tiny patch of blood on one of our pillowcases that I didn’t notice soon enough has washed out a little but is definitely still making a mark, and it hasn’t touched any older stains on our clothes. In terms of cleaning I’d say it does really well as a standard washing liquid, but don’t throw your stain remover away.

When it comes to using it, Greenscents is just as easy to use as any washing. However, while the bottle is beautiful and small, you do effectively have to bulk buy it which could be an issue for some (see more in the ‘is I worth it’ section down below). The second issue is the lid gets seriously gunky, I feel like I waste a little more liquid than I’d like to just with how gunky the liquid is and how much then ends up staying in the lid, only to then run down the side of the bottle when the lid gets put back.

 So, it works, and in some ways it’s the nicest to use with how small and pretty it is – yet in other ways it’s a bit naff. However, it does clean well, which is the main thing, so I’m going to give it a 7 out of 10 for how well it works. If the bottle issue could be sorted it’d get an 8

What damage does it do getting to my house?

From what I can tell, not too much. It avoids using some of the well known nasties, like optical brightener, phthalates, dyes, and lauryl sulfates, and mainly uses essential oils and bacterias made through fermentation. One of the ingredients, cocoamidopropyl betaine, uses some nasty sounding ingredients in production, and I’m not entirely sure about coco-glucoside either. But, in general, the ingredients sound a lot less damaging to produce than in ecover and method. And this is evidenced by the number of badges it’s got on ethical superstore, in particular it uses 79% organic ingredients and is certified by the soil association. For me this is a huge win because I get weak in the knees when it comes to looking after soil and the soil association are really on it with their standards. As well as this, the bottle it comes in is made from sugarcane in a process that traps CO2, and the sugarcane is farmed sustainably, which reduces one of the big costs of packaging. It’s also produced in Somerset, a county in south west England, so it has a much lower distance to travel to get to our doors. So, for impact on the environment getting to the house, I’d give it a good 8/10. It does minimal damage getting to the door, is packaged well, and by using organic ingredients it has a higher chance of it’s ingredients being produced in sustainable farming practices, so it almost improves the environment (though we can’t be sure so it stays firmly at 8/10).

What damage does it do leaving my house?

Relatively little it seems. Since they’ve avoided lots of the major nasties in their ingredients, I think the damage of the actual liquid is minimal. I couldn’t find any exact information about hazard to the environment of the ingredients they used, but at a wiki-informed guess I would say that they are certainly better than ecover/method or normal washing liquid, and are probably the best I’ve found so far, however this doesn’t equate to them being not harmful at all to the environment – let me know in the comments if you can offer some wisdom here. The bottle can happily be recycled, and there is an option to bulk buy this if you have room for it in your house which would minimise packaging even more, however this isn’t possible for everyone and so far I haven’t come across anywhere offering refill for greenscents. So, in terms of damage leaving the house I’d say 7 out of 10. It would be 8 if I were more confident of it’s ingredients and if a refillable option were more widespread.

Is it worth it?

Now, the price of a 500ml bottle of greenscents varies. From their own website the bottle comes in at £5.75 making it 26p a wash. However, on ethical superstore the same size bottle costs just £4.65, making it 21p a wash. For comparison, ecover is 21p a wash and method is 25p a wash. This makes greenscents about comparable with ecover and method. However, postage charges for ethical superstore and greenscents website are both about £4. Meaning you either need to buy 5+ bottles at once and qualify for free postage (assuming you have the space), or you’ll end up paying nearly twice the price of the actual liquid – not ideal. This isn’t the end of the world, it just means that some forethought is needed when buying the product since if it runs out you’re not going to be able to nip to the shops and get some more.

 Despite this issue, the bottle size and look is lovely, the product works really well, and it is far better for the environment than standard washing liquid AND ecover/method washing liquids. To me, this all makes it worth the fuss of buying in bulk. However, if you don’t have space to store 5 bottles of the stuff, then the price you’re looking at paying is nearly double of something that was already significantly more than non-eco alternatives. For this reason I am going to knock a few points off and give greenscents an 7/10 for value.

So it’s a yes from me on Greenscents. What are your thoughts? Have you come across any local companies creating washing liquids and cleaning products in your area?