For quite a long time, I struggled to find eco-friendly dishwasher detergent pods that produce zero waste and actually clean the dishes effectively. Before this, I used a combination of Finish detergent and rinse aid. While it left dishes clean, the amount of plastic waste and toxic chemicals it generated left me with no choice but to seek a healthier alternative.
Types of Eco-friendly Dishwasher Detergents:
Liquid or Gel Detergent
✅ You can customize how much detergent you want to use for each load of dishes and avoid wasting it. However, it's also easy to waste more than necessary if you're not careful.
❌ Messy (it's hard for me to avoid drips on the bottle) and generates plastic waste. To me, it doesn’t seem like a planet-friendly option.
Powder Detergent
✅ Cheap, customizable, and can be provided in eco-friendly packaging. A good example is a Dirty Labs powder detergent – packaging is made of recyclable cardboard.
❌ Can be messy, not suitable for clumsy people :)
Detergent Pods or Tablets
✅ There are lots of options, they're convenient, and they produce zero waste as they can be provided in eco-friendly packaging.
❌ Pods can contain liquid, powder, or both. In the case of liquid content, if one pod gets damaged, the entire package can become a mess. This happens rarely, but it does happen. With powder content, if the washing regime is not appropriately adapted, you might see some powder residue on dishes, which I don’t like. The same happens with non-eco-friendly products, so it's not about eco-friendliness; it's about form-factor.
Top Amazon Eco-Friendly Dishwasher Detergent Pods:
Blueland is my favorite. Apart from being a good eco-friendly detergent, its packaging is very stylish :) I also admire the 'If You Care' packaging, it reminds me every time that I care and why. And it's also the cheapest so far:
Brand | Min price per wash |
$0.24 | |
$0.36 | |
$0.37 | |
$0.37 | |
$0.37 | |
$0.39 | |
$0.49 | |
$0.65 |
Detergent Sheets
I’ve recently noticed that there's a new form of dishwasher detergent - sheets. I haven’t tried them yet, but they look very promising as they can provide all the benefits of pods without creating a mess. I’ve managed to find only Voya and will try to test it. In the meantime, please share in the comments if you’ve tried it and what you think.
Oh yes, last but not least. I struggled for a long time to find an eco-friendly rinse aid in sustainable packaging. There was nothing like this on the market at all, so I decided to trick the system and just stopped using it altogether :) And you know what? The dishes are clean enough without it.
