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With natural ingredients and plastic-free packaging, wash day’s just got more sustainable
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Our picks use less space than bottled detergeants and fit straight through the letterbox
Liquid laundry detergent might leave your clothes smelling and looking clean, but there are some downsides. Most come in plastic packaging, and with less than 10 per cent of plastic actually being recycled, the rest ends up in landfill, polluting our oceans or being burnt.
So for those looking to reduce their environmental footprint, laundry sheets sound like a solid solution. The sheets dissolve in the washing machine, consist of natural ingredients and come in plastic-free (and often even compostable) packaging.
But we’re wondering – as we do with more all-natural, eco-friendly cleaning products – whether they actually get the job done as well as our regular go-to products.
If you’re a fan of strong fragrance, eco laundry sheets might not be for you. We’ve found that, while these will leave your clothes smelling clean, the strong fragrance mostly dissolves during a wash – this is because they lack the synthetic chemicals found in regular detergents. Stong smells aside, our clothes still came out smelling and looking clean so we were more than happy.
Another positive is storage. While laundry detergents come in massive bottles or inconvenient plastic boxes, all the laundry detergents we’ve tested fit right through the letterbox and take up minimal storage space. You will want to keep them somewhere dry though – as mentioned, they dissolve when wet and you wouldn’t want to waste them.
While we didn’t go around purposefully spilling red wine all over our outfits, stains do happen and each load contained some soiled items. We’d still treat heavy spills with a stain remover first – as we would using liquid detergent – but we left the less aggressive stains alone to let the laundry sheets work their magic.
We’re also a relatively active household, so we paid special attention to how well these laundry sheets tackled sweaty gym and hockey clothes. All clothes were directly air-dried after washing to test the longevity of any leftover fragrance too. These are the ones that worth taking for a spin.
You might have read our review of Ecovibe’s cleaning products, and we’re just as enthusiastic about its laundry sheets. The instructions on the packaging were easy to follow and, as Ecovibe recommends adding in an extra sheet for “heavily soiled” items, we opted for two sheets for a load of sports clothes.
If you’re all about that clean laundry smell, these strips are for you. While its fresh linen scent is much more subtle than most liquid detergents we’ve used in the past, we were impressed by the power these little sheets packed. Our sports clothes came out smelling incredibly fresh, which, trust us, is quite the accomplishment for any detergent.
Best: For a floral scent
We got to try The Green Company’s new and improved formula. The brand also updated its packaging, and we loved the simple yet artistic design. We tried both the fresh linen and lavender options, but as most of the sheets we’ve tried came in a fresh linen scent we were excited to try out something different, and it did not disappoint. We really rated the lavender fragrance, and the only reason we ranked Ecovibe’s sheets (£12.99, Ecovibe.co.uk) higher is because its scent lingered a bit more after our load had air dried. Overall, these left our clothes feeling soft and smelling and looking clean, and we’ll be reaching for these sheets again in the future.
This might seem like an expensive pack at first, but when you find out it includes 92 sheets, compared to most other brands which come in batches of 32 or 64, it’s pretty easy to justify the extra cost. The brand also offers a convenient testing pack of 10 sheets (£1, Reco.shop) which will last you for five to 10 washes so that you can try out the formula without having to fully commit. And once you do opt for Reco, a subscription will save you 20 per cent, which is a bigger discount than that of other brands we’ve tried.
This was, again, one of the stronger-smelling sheets and its fresh linen scent lingered long after washing. For harsher stains, we’d still recommend treating them before chucking your load into the washing machine. But less aggressive stains (rosé in this particular case) were easily removed.
We have to say, we’re always a little suspicious of fragrance free detergents as we’re just not that confident it will do the job, especially for our sports clothes. Luckily, these laundry strips proved us wrong. There’s still a faint smell to the sheets when you open the box, but after washing they are – you guessed it – fragrance free. We were impressed by how well it could tackle the smell of post-match hockey clothes, without leaving a trace. If you just prefer a scented detergent though, Kind Laundry also has an ocean breeze option (£16.60, Kindlaundry.com).
These strips were a lot smaller than the others we tried, and we have to admit, using only half of them (as recommended for one load) just didn’t do the trick for us. But, even when you use the full sheet it’s still significantly less product than you’d use with the other sheets.
As with the other fragrance free options we tried, the subtle scent of these sheets mostly disappears when washing, but our clothes still felt clean after using. The only thing we were a bit worried about was how sticky these sheets felt in comparison to others we’ve tested, meaning you might want to store them within a box to make sure they won’t get too damp and spoil.
When opening this batch we were surprised by how similar its sweet, floral scent was to our go-to liquid detergent so we were curious to find out how well that would last after washing. But while our laundry definitely smelled and looked clean coming out of the machine, the scent didn’t linger as much as some of the other ones we tried. The brand recommends half a sheet per load, but in contrast to most of the other sheets we’ve tested it didn’t come with a perforated line, so you have to tear them up manually. Luckily, they split quite easily so this wasn’t too much of a hassle.
We were particularly impressed with how long the clean laundry scent from Ecovibe’s dissolvable laundry detergent strips lingered, but The Green Company’s eco laundry detergent sheets had a lovely design and we rated its distinctive lavender fragrance. No matter what laundry sheets you opt for though, rest assured that the natural ingredients and plastic free packaging will be enough of a motivation for you to swap out your good old supermarket favourites.
For discounts on reusables and sustainable household products, try the links below:
Find a brew that’s better for the planet with our best plastic-free tea bags round-up
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