Soapods Full Review
Posted: 10 March 2008 by Rikke Bruntse-Dahl
When we first saw these so-called Soapods (soap nut shells) in the Nigel's Eco Store online shop, we thought it was a joke. How could these little brown, weirdly shaped, sticky nut shells possibly clean our clothes? Surely a hippy-gone-mad had come up with this. Well, we've tried them and to our delight we have to say that they work very well and make us feel super green.
What makes the Soapods so special as a laundry detergent are their amazing green credentials. The soap nut trees grow in India and Nepal, where people have used the nuts to clean clothes for hundreds of years. The trees can live for up to 90 years and are obviously a renewable source of, well, laundry detergent.
It's a great feeling washing your clothes with these nuts, knowing absolutely no chemicals are involved and then afterwards throwing them in the compost bin. Even the paper bag they come in can be composted. The little protective plastic bag can't, but they can be recycled. Penny Morgan, the director of Soapods, also told us the Soapods are organic and are in the process of getting the Soil Association stamp. They're shipped from India to the UK, where they're packed.
Morgan hopes the Soapods will get the Fairtrade Mark in the near future, but unsurprisingly there isn't a standard for laundry detergents yet, so in the meantime she regularly visits plantations and private farmers to make sure their working conditions are good.
So how do they actually work? Well, the pods are actually shells from a fruit-like berry that grows on the soap nut tree. They contain 12 to 15 per cent sapotin, which is an active cleaning agent. When the shells get into contact with hot water, the sapotin is released and starts cleaning. You put 6-8 pods in a small cotton bag, which comes with the Soapods, and just throw it in the washing machine with your clothes. If your clothes aren't particularly dirty you can use the same pods a couple of times.
After washing, both the clothes and the pods do have a slightly unpleasant vinegary smell, which we don't like, but that problem can be solved by adding a few drops of essential oils like lavender or mint (or whatever takes your fancy) to the bag. We like the fact that, unlike the Ecoballs, the pods can actually make our eco-friendly laundry smell nice if we so wish.
We found that a three-quarters-full load with coloureds works best -- the clothes do get cleaned, but the Soapods won't make your white clothes whiter, which many 'ordinary' washing powders with bleaching agents do. But then again, Soapods never promised to do that in the first place.
As with the Ecoballs, it's far cheaper using the Soapods than other washing detergents. At a fiver for around 25 washes (20p per wash), it doesn't quite compete with the Ecoballs, but is still a better deal than, for instance, Ecover's non-biological washing powder, which would cost you around 36p per wash.
As you might have detected, we're completely smitten by the Soapods. That's because they work, but mainly because we've always thought that washing our clothes is one of those things we'd never manage in a truly green fashion -- and now Soapods has shown us it's possible.
Quality
Value
Ethics
Green
