Are they as good as you want them to be?
Laundry Sheets
So many people are talking about laundry sheets. It's a recurring conversation with travelers in our farmers market booth. We see travelers from all over the country and the world, every week, in our small corner of Planet Mother Earth.
The conversations span the whole spectrum from not wanting to hear any thing remotely related to the truth, to wanting to believe they are the greatest thing, to uh oh...not as good as I thought, to I am on a mission to find a better solution.
Slow down, take a deep breath, and think
It's everywhere
There are ads and articles all over the internet and social media talking about how wonderful Laundry Sheets are. These articles use eco friendly language to push greatness, while not even attempting to hide the truth.
And all of the articles tell this lie:
"PVA – biodegradable and creates the consistency of our Laundry Strips."
It is not biodegradable. It is dissolvable, but it does not biodegrade. Dissolvable means it makes a polyvinyl alcohol solution.
The truth is all of them contain Polyvinyl Alcohol. It's usually the 1st or 2nd ingredient, which is an ingredient that looks like this on the label: PVA or PVOH or PVAc or PVAI.
Or sometimes it's further down in the ingredients list and actually spelled out, as in the label shown to the right.
If you truly want to stop putting micro plastics in the Mother Earth's water, slow down and read the labels.
Even if the sheets are laundry soap sheets instead of laundry detergent sheets, they still are made with a lot of micro plastics.
These polymers were "invented" 100+ years ago
Did you know?
This same polymer, that was invented in the 1920's, is also used as a glue and a laminate.
It is poured over glass as a laminate, making "safety glass", causing the glass to break into beads instead of shattering into shards.
This has saved countless lives in car accidents.
What is polyvinyl alcohol?
Chemistry Language
What exactly is Polyvinyl Alcohol?
It is a water soluble synthetic polymer. Each of these words has a specific meaning in the language of chemistry.
Water is a known quantity. It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and nearly colorless chemical substance (a combination of 2 or more elements). It is the chemical that makes up Mother Earth's surface and atmosphere, and is the main chemical in all known living things. As we know it, it seems impossible to have life without water.
The word soluble means that a "soluble substance" has the ability to form a solution with another substance, the solvent.
PET bottles are everywhere
Look Around and Assess
Synthetic polymers are plastics in many familiar forms.
Nylon is used to make clothing such as stockings and sweaters, among other known items.
Teflon is the non stick coating on cookware.
Bakelite, an older type of plastic, now used to make light switches, formerly used in cutlery handles, jewelry, etc.
Polyvinyl Chloride is used to make PVC plumbing pipes, among other things.
Polyethylene Terephthalate, otherwise known as PET, is commonly used to make the "good" plastic bottles. You will see the letters "PET" in the recycling triangle on the bottom of a PET bottle.
Cute, right?...pet. Pet is assigned a "good" recycling number, because the plastic is "dissolvable".
Water Soluble synthetic polymer
It's Everywhere
Because it is considered to be in the "low toxicity" category, PVA is used to make cartilage replacements (like a human hip), contact lenses and eye drops (yikes!).
It is also used in 3D printing...I wonder if it is what 3D printed food is made from...like in Star Trek. I just read an article in the Thomas Register, about a new 3D printing food factory that "prints" "beef steaks" and "simulated fresh fish".
It is being considered for use as a binder (glue) in pharmaceutical medications to bind together a drug so it can be released into a human slowly, otherwise known as "time released".
ok...let's go back to the definition of a water soluble synthetic polymer. This phrase means that when
Use discernment and make change
What It All Means
water (the soluble substance or solvent; the chemical that causes the other substance to dissolve) comes in contact with the
Polyvinyl Alcohol (another substance), and is mixed together,
it forms a "solution". What is a solution in the language of chemistry? Two separate substances are mixed together to form one substance. They had a chemical reaction, causing each substance to merge with the other, being forever changed into something else. ok...think.
This means that the laundry sheets you may have used today or have in your house are putting a plastic "solution" into the water supply and possibly into your body on a regular basis. It does not mean that the Polyvinyl Alcohol, in the laundry sheets, has disappeared. I know everyone who uses the "laundry sheets" would love to keep thinking that they are doing Mother Earth a BIG favor by using them, but they are not.
Consider making a simple laundry soap out of Instant Liquid Soap. Here's the recipe.