25 Oct 2024
Crazy fact number 1 about washing up liquid…
You can use it to fix a squeaky door!
Just 1 quick pump of our plant-powered pink liquid on a hinge should be enough. Just open and close the door a few times to let the magic happen and hey presto, no more squeaky door!
Crazy fact number 2 about washing up liquid…
Its bubbles ARE NOT what’s cleaning your dishes!
Washing up liquid is not a soap, it’s a detergent.
For most of our daily household cleaning, a detergent does a better job; dissolving more easily in water, not forming a scum and not reacting as much with minerals in hard water.
Q: So what’s its secret?
A: Surfactants.
And there are 2 types in washing up liquid.
1. non ionic surfactants.
These do a great job of removing the surface tension of water - which is essentially a barrier between dirt and detergent. With the barrier gone, a detergent can get up really close and personal with the grime. Non-ionic surfactants are low-foaming because they don’t need bubbles to get their work done and interestingly they tend to do their best work in cold water.
One more reason to NOT waste hot water (and money) washing up!
2. anionic surfactants.
Our surfactants are biodegradable molecules with dirt-loving tails and water-loving heads. Their tails stick to the grime on our plates but all the while their heads won’t let go of the water. The surfactant lifts the dirt off and into the water and there it stays. Until you pull out the plug… then the dirt, the water, the surfactants all head on down the drain.
Anionic surfactants are the ones that will form bubbles. But that’s NOT what got your dishes clean.
why so fanatical about foam?
For so many cleaning products we’ve just always equated bubbles with clean.
Think shampoo and hand soap… we want a rich lather that lasts and when the bubbles aren’t there we assume a product is not doing anything.
So when detergents first came along and we stopped using soap to clean dishes, big brand washing up liquids ADDED foaming agents so we’d still see those bubbles we were so used to.
It was an early marketing gimmick!
we're bursting the bubble.
Most big brand washing up liquids use more anionic surfactants than are necessary for precisely this reason… they are the ingredients that give us bubbles. For example, Fairy use 15-30% anionics in their formulation whereas here at smol we use just 5-15%.
And by the way… in another Interesting fact… you don’t want lots of bubbles in your laundry detergent either!
They cushion your clothes from the essential agitation that’s part of getting a good clean as they tumble about in the washing machine drum. Laundry brands in the States don’t add the foaming chemicals because people use top loading machines and can’t see inside. Our front loading machines here in the UK give us a window onto our washing… and we expect to see bubbles so brands load up their detergents with these extra pointless chemicals.
Not here at smol. Our laundry capsules and laundry liquids are low foam, high efficiency and you won’t see a tonne of useless bubbles. You will see brilliantly clean laundry though!
in summary.
We’re bursting the bubble on the myth that more foam = better cleaning.
Too many bubbles are a sure sign of pointless additives that need extra water to disperse and rinse down our sinks. But now we know better.
Swapping to our plant-powered washing up liquid is one of the ways in which our customers have saved almost 5,000 TONNES of chemicals.
smol things make a big difference, so why not try some and see what all the fuss is about?