Grey Water Friendly Cleaning
With water conservation an everyday concern for all of us, being able to reuse water in our home is increasingly important. By using cleaning products in our homes that are natural and readily breakdown we are more able to use greywater safely in our gardens.
What is greywater? It is water from our kitchen sink, bath tubs, shower and laundry that has been used once and now contains solids, grease, soap, and residues from the cleaners we have used in various wasy in our homes and then discarded down the sink. Greywater does not include toilet water or water used to soak nappies - this is called Blackwater and is not reused.
In some cases greywater is safe to use directly on your garden but this will be determined by a number of things including how and if you filter, treat or store the greywater and what chemicals are in the greywater.
The wide range of cleaners we use in our homes to wash ourselves, our clothing, our dishes and our counters and floors generally end up in our greywater. Frequently, the standard products we buy in the supermarket contain chemicals and synthetic ingredients that may harm your garden. If you are planning on using your greywater on your garden it is best to use natural cleaning products that are appropriately developed for greywater use to avoid contaminating your land.
Particular ingredients to watch for include sodium, phosphates and zeolites.
Sodium (sulphate or chloride) is found in a lot laundry powders on our supermarket shelves. It is essentially salt and does not contribute much to the cleaning of your clothes. In addition it is not friendly to your garden and can contribute to salinity issues. Urban and sub-urban waterways in Australia are becoming loaded with sodium with 10% attributed to households of which approximately 30-50% is coming from laundry powders. Sodium is an inexpensive way to bulk out products to make them cheaper on the supermarket shelves. Look for products that are low sodium (less than 10gm per wash).
Phosphates in low levels can act to fertalise your garden but are toxic to plants at high levels. Overdosing your garden can lead to excessive weed growth and outbreaks of algae in local waterways. Some products have replaced phosphates with Zeolites but these can have 10x the impact on gardens and should be avoided. Look for products that have little or no phosphates (less than 1gm per wash).
Zeolites, while there are naturally occurring zeolites, the ones found in laundry products are all synthetic and contain sodium ions. Apart from their lower efficiency than phosphates, the main environmental concern about Zeolites is that they are not soluble in water and are therefore transferring a fair amount of very fine insoluble powder directly to your garden through greywater.
Tri Nature products are all readily biodegradable and do not contain any Phosphates or Zeolites. Where Sodium is used it is in small quantites to keep the products grey water safe.
Tri Nature’s Alpha Plus Laundry Liquid has been voted number one by ‘Waterwise Systems’ who design domestic greywater systems. It is one of the best products on the market for direct grey water use (untreated). Their Alpha Plus Laundry Powder is also recommended for grey water system use but does contain low levels of sodium so only the laundry rinse water should be used directly on the garden.
