Laundry day has never been so environmentally-friendly.

One of the sneaky ways you are putting both the environment and your health at risk can be found in none other than the laundry room. Store-bought products are packed with toxic ingredients – some of which are not even noted on the packaging – that irritate the skin and can lead to diseases such as cancer. These five alternatives cover all your laundry needs without much effort, and they take heed to both your skin’s health and your environmental consciousness.

Stain Remover

There are a lot of natural stain removers to choose from, but I prefer hydrogen peroxide for its accessibility and environmental-friendliness as well as for being a panacea of sorts. Hydrogen peroxide has anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-mold, and anti-mildew properties, which makes it a wonderful cleaning agent. In addition to cleaning cuts and wounds, it can be used to remove clothing stains. Simply spray the hydrogen peroxide onto the stain, allow it to sit for 10 minutes, and then throw the clothing into the washer. Prior to washing, it may also help to use a toothbrush to scrub the stain while the hydrogen peroxide is sitting.

Detergent

Adapted from My Healthy Green Family, this detergent recipe mimics the effects of Tide, without the toxic, potentially cancerous ingredients. The soap gets rid of impurities and oils, the washing soda both cleanses and softens, the baking soda removes stains and odors, and the salt prevents fading.

Ingredients:

• 1 bar vegetable-based glycerin soap, grated finely
• 1 cup washing soda
• 1/2 cup baking soda
• 1/4 cup coarse salt

Directions: Grate the bar of soap. It can be scented according to your olfactory preferences, but make sure there are no artificial perfumes. Combine the grated soap with the remaining ingredients and mix until evenly combined. When not using, store in an airtight, glass container. Use in dosages equal to what any regular detergent company recommends.

Softener

Instead of using softener, add 1/2 cup of baking soda to the rinse cycle. Baking soda is a natural softener and isn’t less irritable to your skin as are chemical-ridden store-bought brands.

However, if you have the time to put together a more effective and aromatic softener, in a bowl, combine 1/2 cup baking soda with 1/2 cup water. Stir until the baking soda is dissolved. Next add 2 cups of white vinegar, but slowly, as the mixture will foam and rise slightly. Once it has settled, add about 15 drops of your favorite essential oils. Mix thoroughly and store in a glass container. Use the same amount you would if adding normal softener to the laundry.

Wrinkle Releaser/Dryer Sheets

To prevent wrinkles, take 1 teaspoon of the extended softener recipe and mix it with 1 cup of water in a spray bottle. Spray lightly onto wet clothing, just out of the washer, before putting into the dry cycle or hanging to dry.

Dry-Clean-Only Clothing Deodorizer

To remove the stink from clothes that require dry cleaning only, vodka is a handy tool. Simply spray vodka all around the clothing item and let it hang overnight to dry. Vodka has anti-bacterial properties that get rid of the smell, surprisingly without leaving any vestiges of vodka aroma behind.

Images: Gemtek1, Tim Samoff, Kathie Lapcevik, TPapi, Catzkill, Lordelo

The post 5 Ways to Wash and Freshen Your Clothes Without Chemicals appeared first on EcoSalon.

 28-year-old Anke Domaske has developed her own fabric, called QMilch, made from high concentrations of the milk protein casein.

Introducing QMilch: a silky, man-made fiber produced entirely without chemicals. German fashion designer and microbiologist Anke Domaske developed the yarn that is made entirely from milk protein fibers and extracted from milk that did not meet hygiene standards. Yahoo News says “The milk fibres contain 18 amino-acids that are beneficial to health.”

The amino acids in the protein have actually been found to be antibacterial and anti-aging and can help regulate both blood circulation and body temperature. Good news for conscious shoppers looking for clothes that do double duty. With the health benefits and lack of traditional oil by-products, QMilch is 40% more expensive than organic cotton, with the cost of a dress retailing for about $199. But regardless of cost, the designer aims to start mass-producing the material next year.

“We have developed an all-natural fiber consisting of a very high concentration of casein, with a few other natural ingredients – and in only two years,” says Domaske, a former microbiology student.

Milk fibers themselves are nothing new and have been around since the ’30s in Italy and America to compete with wool. The fibers, known as ARALAC, Lanatil and Merinova, are all different brands from the same fiber manufactured from milk casein which, says textile importer Euroflax, “fell victim to their minor flaws and the war.”

QMilch yarns

According to Reuters, Domaske’s fashion label Mademoiselle Chi Chi, a favorite among the likes of Mischa Barton and Ashlee Simpson has now started weaving the milk fiber into its collection. MCC clothes are currently made from a combination of fibers, including QMilch, but Domaske plans to design a collection made entirely from the milk fiber.

“We know that everything that is based on oil has a limit, that materials like cotton that take up a lot of land, water, and chemicals are limited, so we need to think about how we produce fabrics and textiles in the future, the Textile Research Association tells Newser.

With better, perhaps even sexier branding, these fibers can flourish and make it out of labs and tech talk and into the mainstream.

Consumers will ultimately be the deciding factor.

Dresses made from Anke Domaske’s QMilch

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The American obsession with cleanliness.

My husband once told me a childhood story that, for better or worse, is permanently seared into my neural pathways.

When he was around 10, his two best friends were identical twin brothers (we’ll call them Stink and Stinkier). The pair had the utterly bizarre quirk of running home to change if they passed noticeable gas. Not just their underwear, but their entire outfits. Immediately. Was it because something mistakenly came out? Was it because they believed the scent from their fluff had left an indelible mark on their bottoms and transferred to their clothing? Or, just possibly, was this an unfortunate case of parental shaming?

We’ll never know for certain, but Stink and Stinkier are far from unique when it comes to our society’s extreme compulsion to smell “good.” It’s more than just cleanliness; this is aggressive de-scenting. Supermarkets and box stores proffer many ways for humans to strip themselves of indigenous odors on our persons and in our environments: Lysol wet-naps to clean cart handles, anti-bacterial hand cleansers in every imaginable dispenser tool to scare off bacteria, flushable wipes to improve upon toilet paper, antiperspirant to transform us into cucumber mints and peach cobbler breezes, Axe to manifest chick magnet glory (make that delusion) for teen boys.

We shower more than anyone anywhere, we wash our clothing after just one wear, and we slather a multitude of scents on our body, from shampoo to conditioner to lotion to perfume to deodorant – anything, in fact, but au naturel.

Bromidrophobia, or fear of body odors, is relatively common in modern society. About.com says of it: “Today’s emphasis on cleanliness has led to the belief that bodily scents are dirty or taboo. This can lead to an unhealthy obsession with ensuring that our regular odors are removed or masked.”

Run a quick Google search of Bromidrophobia, and you’ll see stories of people washing their hands until they’re raw, showering three or more times a day and yes, cleaning their clothes just as often. Bromidrophobia can also refer to a fear of others’ body odors creeping up on us when we sit close on public transportation or even (gulp), the next TED talk you attend. Stink and Stinkier, indeed.

According to Vadim Bolshakov, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, our need to wash away scent is actually taking away our ability to tell others (without opening our mouths), that we are having a response to them.

Bolshakov wrote in her proposal for an MIT installation that, “In the West, smell is thought of in ‘aesthetic terms – pleasant or unpleasant,’ whereas in other cultures, body smell is an important personal defining feature. Since our representations of the world are most of the time scentless, this indeed reinforces the social drive for deodorization of the world.”

But what are the consequences for our need to be clean? In terms of clothing, this means an exorbitant over-usage of water and the wasted time to do overwhelming amounts of laundry, not to mention fueling obsessive compulsive behavior – and consumption of products to “fix” it all.

Kelly Drennan of Fashion Takes Action writes in a recent EcoSalon article: “The average North American household washes 400 loads of laundry per year. This accumulated number of washes requires 13,500 gallons of water to complete, and is equivalent to how much water it takes to fill a standard above-ground pool.”

And what of that “extra cleaning power” you often see advertised in laundry detergent? Those cleaners often come with a potent chemical cocktail that is not only harmful to groundwater but to your body, emitting a carcinogenic, endocrine-disrupting additive so that you can combat the scent of the low-rent restaurant you were just dining in or, yes, the gas you just passed. With our socially-approved penchant for washing items after just one wear, you have to wonder what all this lather is doing to our bodies and brains.

And then there’s the other fabric taking on entirely too much sulfate: the social fabric. Being squeaky clean means more than a health and ecological hit. It may also interfere with our ability to select appropriate mates, or sniff out trustworthy friends, or sense danger, say evolutionary biologists. So ask yourself: when was the last time you stopped and smelled the Joneses?

Images: Sean Rogers1, Prayitno, jbcurio

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