A warning has been issued to anyone using fabric softener (Image: Getty)
Households across the UK have been warned over buying fabric softener for their washing machine.
It’s part and parcel of the cycle for many people: a box of washing powder, a bottle of fabric softener and a huge and seemingly never ending pile of clothes that need washing ad nauseum – then there’s the battles to dry them in the winter without sending your soaring or filling your house full of mould.
But households are being warned about using fabric softener along with their washing powder because of the packaging it comes in.
While most washing powders, like Daz, Ariel and Bold, as well as supermarket own brand versions, still come in big cardboard boxes in both their biological and non-bio versions, the same is not true of fabric softeners.
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Most fabric softeners are sold in big plastic bottles, often coloured or solid white ones, and often using a coloured cap which cannot be recycled.
These are notoriously bad for the environment because you use them once for a few weeks and then it takes hundreds of years for them to break down.
Writing in her book Joyful Environmentalist, Isabel Losada urged households: “How to remove plastic from your home… buy an eco-friendly powder in an old fashioned cardboard box. Use way less of it and do your washing on 30C.
“Fabric softeners or anything at all that comes in plastic, including ‘eco eggs’ and various other bits of plastic nonsense – no thanks.
“Or you can stop washing any chemicals into our oceans by using soap nuts. These are a kind of nut grown sustainably in the Himalayan mountains and they contain saponin which is a natural detergent. My clothes are clean, they don’t strip the colour and they have saved me money because they last for months.”
She added: “Life is short. So joy is vital. There is a lot of overwhelm about this subject which doesn’t help. Where do you start?
“The good news is that there is much we can do. So much.
“Let’s enjoy changing the way we live and make choices that enhance our life for ourselves and for others. Anything less is a disservice to our one brief life and to our beautiful planet.”