eco balls

[Carol]

I have never seen the eco balls but will look out for them. 

I am by nature a messy person and manage to ruin clothes with bleach  quite a bit really.  I am always spilling food on myself as well.  Why is it that I rarely get stains out of my clothes.  I have reduced my washing temp. to 30c but even at 40c my clothes didnt get clean.  It does my head in.  Wonder if eco balls would work on my messed up tops.   Either that or get a bib...

;)

[Carol]

[cambourne7]

....  Like Cambourne I use washing soda sometimes but has anyone discovered a cheaper substitute for Calgon- I keep thinking there must be a basic substance which would deal with the limescale but don't know what.

Vinegar. To use as a de-scaler.

Every six months i use a washing machine descaler which is less that £2 and one eco wash in the machine  ;D

[Amazin]

I read recently that the manufacture of wash balls in China uses child labour...

[grawrc]

Amazin you know that is a big question and problem. It seems just about everything I buy these days is "made in China" and that bugs me. Not because I don't want China to develop into an industrial economy. Far from it. Just that it worries me that the "safeguards" that we'd expect here are probably not in place and that I just don't know if they are.

[OliveOil]

Well i must admit all my cleaning products are Ecover and I'm happy with it, esp the kitchen spray which can be refilled at the health shop so no empties to chuck away.

There is the soap nuts which are completely natural but no good for whites as they do go grey after a while and everything smells of ummm soap nuts

[grawrc]

Well they work. Very efficiently actually. Dirty muddy jeans from the allotment, tshirt with pasta sauce splashes and dribbles, tea towels all came out pristine.

Really surprising thing is the absence of smell. I hadn't realised just how much I associate that smell with clean laundry. Time to change my perceptions I guess.

I still haven't figured out how to reduce the number of rinses on my all-singing all-dancing Bosch so that's next.

And then the ethical thing of course. If they are made in China or wherever by child labour then I probably  certainly need to use something else.

[grawrc]

OK they are made in China. It says so on the box. So far I've been unable to find out anything connecting their manufacture with child labour. So how would I do that?

They're sold by ecozone so maybe I should ask them? But then they'd hardly say "yes of course they are made by child labour" would they? Amnesty International? Any thoughts? Or am I being paranoid?

[Amazin]

Grawc, they're not just sold by ecozone - their manufacture has exploded (as has anything with the prefix "eco" these days, it seems) and all sorts of suppliers are muscling their way to the trough. I'll see if I can dig up the source of the child labour report.

[grawrc]

No Amazin I didn't mean that they were. The ones I bought were from Nigels Eco Store but the boxwas marked from Ecozone.