Filed under: Kitchen, Your Home, Storage & Cleaning, Cleaning
You may have noticed some extra dirt on your dishes lately -- who knew it could be because your detergent went green? Turns out a lack of phosphates can make for a lack of cleanliness.Dishwashers are supposed to be about saving time and effort when you're desperate to get out of the kitchen. But lately, you may have found that your convenient time-saver is less than convenient. Legions of dishwasher owners are complaining that their dishes haven't been getting clean and some are reporting gray and dingy pots and pans, blackened aluminum and still-dirty glasses and plates. The culprit? Well, it's not your washer, it's your detergent.
Do your dishes look like this? Photo: Getty
Up until this year, phosphates were a main ingredient in many popular name brand detergents -- including Cascade and Palmolive. Phosphates are what create the bubbly stuff in your detergent, to help get your dishes clean. But this past June, seventeen states -- including llinois, Massachusetts and Michigan -- banned phosphates. That's because environmentalists believe that when phosphates enter the water supply they block oxygen production, which is dangerous for the fish populations that rely on it.
The phosphate ban is great news for the environmental and wildlife activists, but many are finding that these new phosphate-free detergents require two or three dishwashing runs in order to get pots and pans clean -- especially in areas with hard water.
Running the washer an extra two or three times doesn't seem like a very eco-friendly alternative, and it's certainly not time-saving or efficient. Around 58 percent of all homes in the U.S. have dishwashers, and more than 88 percent of new homes are dishwasher equipped. So this phosphate ban could potentially waste a lot of water.
Thanks to the ban, some are even crossing the border to buy "not green" detergents. We sympathize: Our own dishes have come out of the dishwasher still covered in grime on more than one occasion. It seems silly to have to run the washer over and over again, but then again, it's also horrifying to know you're willingly contributing to fish dying. As one of the freakish few that actually enjoys hand-washing dishes, this isn't that much of a dilemma for me. I will happily forgo the dishwasher for a therapeutic washing session. But for the time-crunched or lazy sloths among us, hand-washing isn't always an option.
So tell us: Are you willing to deal with dirty dishes, or are you considering searching for phosphate-free detergent alternatives?