Thursday, April 02, 2009
I am apparently an eco-nut
Mark Hemingway over at The Corner mocks Washington state's ban on dish washing detergents with phosphates. The ban has apparently triggered a boom in the smuggling of Cascade because phosphate-free detergents "don't work as well."
Well, I confess to unreconstructed environmentalism on this one. Phosphates from grey water screw up the chemistry of downstream bodies of water. They can wreck a lake, or at least make it a lot less pleasant. That is why they were banned from laundry detergent a generation ago.
Sadly, the housewives of America had already been sold on perfectly spotless glasses by the time people understood the impact of phosphates on the environment, and since nobody wants to irritate a dedicated homemaker the government exempted dishwasher detergent.
Now, I'm not big on banning things, but I do think it is a bit anti-social for people to use dishwasher detergent with phosphates when phosphate-free products are available (buy it here or in your local grocery store)
It is possible to think Al Gore is a fool or a hypocrite and still want to avoid pointless pollution and waste.
18 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Apr 02, 05:53:00 PM:
What ingredient do they substitute for phosphate in dishwashing/laundry detergent TH? Is it possible the substitute may be worse for the enviroment than phosphates?
By 
Escort81, at
Thu Apr 02, 06:17:00 PM:
When the AP piece was published on March 28 and I commented on it, snarkily including Glen Frey's classic "Smuggler's Blues" for a soundtrack, the link to the AP article discussed the problems with high phosphate detergent. It is a classic negative externality.
The absurdity expressed in the article was the unforeseen consequence of the way in which the ban is being rolled out -- first at the county level, then to all of the state and some other states, leading consumers to purchase the "good stuff" where it is still legal, and having other people who want to do the right thing for the enviroment by using low phosphate detergent still try to get their dishes just as clean by selecting a dishwasher cycle that uses more water (and lasts longer, also using more electricity). All at once everywhere, and with some helpful hints from Heloise may have been preferable. The industry did not object, and if the stuff is that bad, off with its head.
As a guy, I don't particularly care what my dishes look like, I just want them washed in really hot water so I know that most of the killer bacteria has been removed. Not for me so much as for my elderly father, who lacks strong resistance to infection. I can still eat out of a dog dish and be OK.
By , at
Thu Apr 02, 08:14:00 PM:
Nah. Just a rich white guy, is all.
By Heminator, at
Thu Apr 02, 08:40:00 PM:
I was just making a drive-by observation, I hope I wasn't mocking it too much. As I understand it, most dishwashing soaps are going to be phosphate free in a few years voluntarily. Hopefully, they have a phosphate-free formula that works by then.
By , at
Thu Apr 02, 09:30:00 PM:
Environmentalism is going to create other unintemded consequences for years to come as we struggle to get it right.
In the 1070's we inadvertantly tightenened buildings and lessened the air changes and created sick building syndrome. Well hello people we are doing it again....
Here is another example...Governments push archives to save energy on their heating and air conditioning. When they do, the algorithims say that they have to replace the books more often USING MORE ENERGY than they thought they saved! Likewise, you might save energy on heating and cooling but find that if productivity goes down by 1% you find that you USE MORE ENERGY than you thought you saved.
Right now, mistakes are being made everywhere. In the 70's my spouse was the project manager for the Solar Energy Research Institute. Not the one they designed which was cost ineffective and completely a mess but the one that actually got built.
Now, when we hear these politicos pontificating, the professionals looking for the easy solutions, and the greenies dreaming, we just shake our heads and look at the floor. Its much more complicated than people think.
a moderate
By , at
Thu Apr 02, 09:32:00 PM:
Excuse me...not the 1070s...the 1970s. Sorry.
A moderate
By TigerHawk, at
Thu Apr 02, 10:19:00 PM:
Escort81 -
Goddamn, I had completely forgotten, in the space of five days, that you had written on this issue. The failure to link back was not intentional. I just remembered that I had read something else on the subject recently, and could not remember where.
Anyway, I would have thought that people in Spokane would have water softeners. In eastern Iowa, which also has hard water, everybody has a water softener in their basement which renders makes it possible to get stuff clean. Not sure, though, that phosphate-free detergent would work perfectly in artificially softened water, but it still seems like a bad trade. I might be willing to sacrifice the birds and bees to get rid of spots on my apples ("Big Yellow Taxi"), but not on my drinking glasses.
By Roy Lofquist, at
Thu Apr 02, 10:25:00 PM:
Totally agree on sensible regulations. Problem is that there has been an overzealous proliferation of regulations that do not have a clear rationale.
As for the dishes, my Lucy dog does a great job and enjoys the work.
By , at
Fri Apr 03, 03:38:00 AM:
It's so pathetic to see a rightblogger bowing and scraping to his wingnut readership whenever a rational thought pops in his head.
"Now I know this goes against orthodoxy, and normally I'm just as nuts as you, but..."
By Dawnfire82, at
Fri Apr 03, 08:00:00 AM:
Rational?
On the one hand, it's apparently ineffective. On the other, keeping it on the books is inconvenient for the locals.
Sounds like a pretty stupid law. That is, if you operate under the philosophy that laws are intended to serve the public, not push social engineering projects.
But then, this from the state that seriously debated taxing rainfall...
By , at
Fri Apr 03, 09:03:00 AM:
Ingredients of "7th Generation" Dishwashing Gel, from their website:
Aqua (water! wow!), sodium silicate (protection agent and alkalinity builder), sodium polyacrylate, sodium citrate and sodium carbonate (water softeners), ppg-6 C12-15 pareth-12 (cleaning agent), xanthan gum (thickener), essential oils and botanical extracts* (medica limonum peel (lemon) and citrus aurantifolia (lime)). *D-Limonene is a component of these essential oils.
C-12 and C-15 ppg are common surfactants that are not particularly biodegradable. D-limonene is a common degreaser that is from extract of citrus peels. It's "green" only in the sense that is is less toxic than methylene chloride, which used to be widely used instead of Limonene compounds. It's "sorta" biodgradable.
Reading the label on the Cascade Dishwashing gel that we use, it has Sodium Polyphosphate as the primary ingredient. The label says "phosphate free", which means that it does not have the conventional "free" phosphate salts that cause foaming, deplete dissolved oxygen in water and fertilize algae and cause eutrophication of ground water.
Also, sodium polyphosphate is widely used in water softeners, for some of the same reasons that it is a good cleaning agent; it's ability to sequestrate charged ions (dirt).
I don't really see the big advantage of "7th Generation" over "Cascade", especially when you consider that the bugs in most waste treatment plants will digest tripolyphosphate rather easily, and you might end up using more detergent that is less effective than less detergent that is more effective?
Maybe they just need to use "Jet Dry" in their dishwashers to stop the spotting.
If all those people in Spokane had water softeners, they would probably be using MORE sodium tripolyphosphate in their water softeners than they use in Cascade or some similar product.
But as someone commented earlier, I'm just some stupid wingnut, so this should be disregarded.
Meh.
-David
By , at
Fri Apr 03, 09:09:00 AM:
Phosphate is stripped out at your local wastewater treatment plant. It is only an issue if you dump your grey water in the ditch by your house.
By , at
Fri Apr 03, 12:35:00 PM:
Craig,
Actually, Sodium Tripolyphosphate is supposed to be safe for septic tanks, meaning it is ok for rural areas (The bugs in the septic tank will digest this. It's what's for dinner!). I don't know too many people that just dump their wastewater (grey water) in a ditch anymore.
-David
By Brian Schmidt, at
Fri Apr 03, 07:08:00 PM:
Yahoo for Tigerhawk! I knew I had seen him show up at some of our watermelon socialist meetings.
By , at
Sat Apr 04, 12:26:00 AM:
David said,
I don't know too many people that just dump their wastewater (grey water) in a ditch anymore.
Me: I know one (the bathroom goes to a septic tank o.k.). Perhaps it is to these that we should preach our anti-phosphate message.
By davod, at
Sun Apr 05, 08:39:00 AM:
Many states already have restrictions on the use of products with phosphates in them. I think dishwasher detergent was made an exception. For example DC has banned products with phosphate in them for over twenty years, the excepton being dishwasher detergent. The District is considering including the dishwasher detergent in the ban.
By davod, at
Sun Apr 05, 08:47:00 AM:
PS:
"I just want them washed in really hot water so I know that most of the killer bacteria has been removed."
This is my problem with the idea that you can use cold or warm water to wash dishes or laundry.
Detergents are made to clean. But are they made to kill bugs (Bed and germs). I do recall reading last year of the bed bug returning to hotel beds after a long absence. I wonder if this had anything to do with trend to use cold water to wash the laundry.
By , at
Sun Apr 05, 10:50:00 AM:
"But it works very well..."
Apparently that is not an opinion shared by those rushing to another county buy the phosphate-laden alternatives.
So do I believe the admitted greenie who would happily ban the stuff or the folks who actually have to live under the ban?
