Cleanut: A Detergent Made With Soapnuts
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 11. 6.07
Almawin Cleanut is a new laundry detergent from Germany whose main ingredient is soapnut extract. When I first heard about this product, I was immediately intrigued because soapnuts are a great natural detergent. They are one of the few botanicals that contain saponin. The seeds come from trees (Sapindus mukorossi) grown throughout India and Nepal. Before this detergent was released, soapnuts were only available in their raw form, and they were fairly expensive.
Cleanut detergent comes in liquid form and also contains other ingredients like certified natural surfactants and organic soaps. It available from Amazon. The cost is $18.98 for for 2 bottles of 25 fluid ounces (about 38 cents per load).
AlmaWin Cleanut exceeds the Belgian Ecogarantie standards, which means the product is produced in a highly sustainable manner.
However, if you purchasing this product from Amazon in the U.S., there is the unfortunate issue of the energy involved in importing the product from Germany, and then shipping it to your home (mine order arrived via DHL — not optimal).
Complete Ingredients: Soap nut extract, natural (saccharodial) surfactants based on corn, potatoes and sugarcane, pure vegetable soap from controlled organic cultivation, fatty alcohol sulphates of coconut oil, ethanol, wheat proteins, citric acid, eucalyptus and verbena oil from controlled organic cultivation, sodium salt of succinic acid, benzyl alcohol, water.
See also: Soap Nuts: A New Alternative to Wash Clothes
:: Almawin Cleanut via Sustainable Is Good
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saponin is used to kill fish in the tropics too.
Does anyone have any experience using this detergent?
I am curious as to how gentle it is on clothing.
I used the detergent and it seemed to work quite well in cold water. I'm think this detergent is actually one of the least harsh out there.
Justin
I see this product comes in a big fat plastic jug. I wouldn't buy it. I only buy soap in cardboard boxes. Arm & Hammer uses recycled paperboard for their baking soda detergent, and it's biodegradable.
in India most of the gold smith use almawin cleanuts
to clean gold and silver articles by this way they are reducing the chemical detergent
Soapnuts work a treat! they are also fully biodegradable and are just as powerful at getting dirt off clothing as conventional products( they use soapanin as well but only a miniscule percentage, adding chemicals to make up the rest)
I have been using a company in europe called soapods and my experience is through them
if you want markets to have the product in america, ask! shops respond and in terms of shipping from india, if you drink tea or coffee you are shipping just as far.
at soapods www.soapods.com they can supply direct but if we as consumers want to get this wonder product into all of our homes, the big supermarkets have to be asked for large scale distribution to be set up...
We use Soap Nuts (that's the brand name) and have had very good results with them. I am/was concerned about how fair trade/sustainable they are, but I have not heard anything bad about the business practices.
They clean really well. In our case, we just use the whole nut in a cloth bag (we usually put 4 in the bag and get 3-4 uses out of it) and wash in cold water, mostly.
The best part is the end result is compostable, if you use the whole nut, and the boxes we buy them in are cardboard, so we can put them in with our recycling.
~Jen M