One of the most interesting home products I’ve found on the market today are Eco Balls (also called Washballs or Aquaballs). If you have a large family like mine, the amount of laundry soap and energy used by the washing machine is pretty huge, and obviously not good for the environment, as well as our health, especially if you still haven’t switched to (more expensive) non-toxic, earth-friendly brands. As most of the energy used by our washing machine comes from heating, what I’ve done is keep the wash at lower temperatures, but obviously the amount of detergent has always been an issue.
Enter “Eco Balls”, amazing little balls which, when thrown into your wash, do all the work your regular soap does (and claim to kill bacteria too) without any chemicals, detergents and the like. When you work out what you save on soap, the savings are enormous, with something like 6 cents a load with the balls, to approx. 80 cents with detergent, more depending on what brand you buy. You can buy kits which come with refills, stain remover (it doesn’t do that great with heavy stains) as well as dryer balls for “fabric softer” role.
So does it really work? While I wait for my order to arrive, I found a good review worth checking out. The verdict? Some liked it, others were disappointed with its cleaning power. There was also one complaint about how the ball came apart and broke her washing machine. Either way, its a product I think worth trying out for yourself -because I think eliminating detergents would be a great thing.