Fun With Phosphates

IIRC, phosphate acts as a fertilizer. So technically it is incorrect to call it toxic. I don't think it kills, plants/fish, but it can cause algae to grow, and that could lead to low oxygen levels. As felinecannonball mentioned above, phosphate is very important for our present civilization as fertilizer. I don't think we have 100 years of supply left either. So in addition to not messing up lakes and streams by using it like this, we ought to be conserving the supply, not flushing it away with our dishwater.

I dunno, Kevin. We tried phosphate-free detergent in our dishwasher and found that our glasses started getting really cloudy. I imagine the industry knows this and knows that customers won't be happy with it. It'll be interesting to see consumer reaction if the new detergents don't solve this problem.

From the Consumer Reports website:

Green can clean. Phosphates help boost the cleaning power of detergents, but they also harm the environment by encouraging algae growth in freshwater. Of the six phosphate-free cleaners tested for this detergents review, five have enzymes. The Ecover tablet and powder and Seventh Generation do a good to excellent job cleaning. The Seventh Generation is reasonably priced, making this eco-friendly cleaners an attractive option.

Consumer Reports doesn't generally give much of a crap about protecting the environment for its own sake. They judge each product on how well it performs, so if they say that the 7th Gen and Ecover detergents work "good to excellent", then you can safely say that your dishes will be clean even without phosphates. Or you could do what I do and just wash everything by hand, which takes pretty much the same amount of time as scraping/cleaning/putting in dishwasher.

We regularly use Palmolive's phosphate-free dishwasher liquid, and it works just fine. It's actually cheaper than the regular stuff.

I didn't read any whining, or even any disagreement with the phosphate ban, which may well be necessary. I am merely disputing the logic of the post, namely that because firms are planning to supply phosphate-free detergent in response to regulation, this proves that phosphate-free detergent works just as well, and any industry resistance must therefore be only because the "industry just didn't feel like doing it." That's a faulty argument.

I have been saying for years that the democRATs have been pushing us towards Socialism and then Communism. I recently realized that it is really Fascism that is their goal. Big government has no right to do the outlaw of effective dishwasher chemicals. Enviro-fascists have been making up reasons to control the way you act in the privecy of your own home for years. This is another step towards Fascism and the confiscation of our guns. If some plants or animals can't survive in modern times, then they deserve to go extinct. Others will take their place in the great food chain of life. To expect me (the AMERICAN People) to give up my rights in this way goes against the bill of rights in the Declaration of this great country. If these Enviro-Fascists don't like it, they can move away.

In the late '80s in France, detergent companies were already running TV ads touting their green cred because their soap had no phosphates. All I'm saying is, the French loved it. Yes, RedStaters should be reaching for their guns.

Industry "didn't feel like doing it?" Please! You know, Kevin, you've got a prominent platform here on the interwebs, writing for a big brand name progressive publication. Don't be saying things like "industry didn't feel like doing it." It shows that you are shallow as hell. Industry doesn't do "feelings." They do research. They have actual money on the line, and actual shareholders who by law they must pay attention to. They also have customers, and they try to keep close track of whether those customers are planning to continue buying the product. That's where the "feelings" come in. If the customers aren't feeling the clean dishes, they aren't buying the soap. The soap makers know this and it terrifies them. You make them seem lazy, like your college roommates. No, the problem is, their customers are spoiled. They are used to a certain standard of cleanliness in dishes. The tradeoff between that sparkle and the environment hasn't been made clear enough to them. The fact is, the only environmental progress that is ever made and is ever going to be made depends on the broad general public agreeing to have less, to reduce their perceived quality of life, to spend more to get less. There is no free ride here, no shelter in "false choice" rhetoric. Taking care of the environment costs. And there's no way to shift all the cost to hated ones like "industry." Life just doesn't work that way. But you know this, right? You're just posturing here. Right? Please answer me. Right? Oh God....

There are technical reasons why we used CFCs for refrigeration and had lead in paint and gasoline. We then identified reasons why these things were bad ideas and we got alternatives. These alternatives work just fine, thank you. Factories belched soot and pollution into the air. We heard no end of complaints about the high costs of fixing this - ignoring, of course, the high cost of treating all of the people who were made ill. People in this thread are completely missing the concept of externalities. Phosphates *seem* cheap because the people using them don't actually have to deal with the consequences of that usage. This is just like looking at the costs of removing freon from our cooling systems without looking at the costs of destroying the ozone layer. We add the condition "don't pollute the water" to detergent makers and let the market come up with the most effective way to achieve this end. We end up with things which work just as well... And that don't pollute the water. Imagine that.

Here's your slap-down: http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2009/04/feelings-nothing-more-than...

"My goodness, even the Euros said no. Guess they didn't feel like buying it. Maguire, you're full of it. I used to follow the detergent industry as part of my job. I remember the phasing out of phosphates from laundry detergents in the UK in the early 1990s. The Swiss phased out phosphates in 1986; the Czechs in 2000, the Slovenians in 2004. Kevin is right that there's inertia in the industry, as there's only 3.5 soapers (P&G, Colgate, Unilever, and Henkel as a minor player) in the industry. Consumer Reports indicated that phosphate-free cleaners worked just as well a phosphate-containing detergents, because of the higher use of enzymes in the phosphate-free detergents. By the way, thanks for deleting my comment on your blog pointing out the above, and that you'd totally misread a toxicology paper on phosphate substitutes.