“Even the testers were amazed”: soap nuts rattle through mercilessly at Stiftung Warentest
Created: 05/17/2022, 09:49 am
By: Andrea Stettner
Soapnuts promise to be an ecological alternative to conventional detergents.
But do they wash just as well?
The advantages and disadvantages at a glance.
Soapnuts have been commercially available as natural products for several years.
They are considered an
environmentally friendly alternative to conventional detergents
- naturally grown and free of chemical additives such as enzymes, surfactants or fragrances.
Allergy sufferers therefore also like to use soap nuts.
Or you can simply make your own laundry detergent from household products.
But does it really clean blouses, shirts and the like?
Soapnuts are considered a natural alternative to conventional detergents.
But do they wash just as well?
© Niehoff/Imago
Advantages of soap nuts: Environmentally friendly washing without chemicals
Soapnuts are considered to be particularly sustainable because they are of natural origin and still have good washing performance.
Soapnuts contain so-called
saponins, which have a similar
effect to surfactants in detergents.
In combination with water, these form a soapy solution.
Saponins reduce the surface tension of water, attach themselves to dirt particles and remove them from clothing.
On top of that, soap nuts are supposed to make the clothes cuddly soft, which in turn saves the fabric softener.
Your leftovers are even compostable.
So everything ok?
Disadvantages of soap nuts: Laundry turns gray faster
Unfortunately, no.
Although the ecological benefit seems to outweigh conventional detergents from the chemical laboratory, the clothes suffer from the soap nuts in the long run.
As
Stiftung Warentest
determined in a long-term test in 2019, soap nuts perform significantly worse than conventional liquid detergents.
Incidentally, this also applies to horse chestnuts, another popular organic alternative.
"The laundry turns gray so quickly that even the inspectors were amazed."
is the sobering conclusion of
Stiftung Warentest
.
After just six washes, the white of the test textiles had visibly clouded over and turned into a rich gray after 20 washes.
Worse was only the result of the washing chestnuts.
The problem: the natural products didn't manage to keep the dissolved dirt particles in the wash water - instead, over time, they settled in the textiles.
The liquid detergent, on the other hand, managed to drain the dirt with the dishwashing water.
The situation is similar when removing stains with soap nuts: the natural products hardly remove everyday dirt such as tea, spinach and chocolate dessert.
The
stains are still clearly visible after a 40 degree wash
.
"The agents lack effective combinations of dirt-cracking enzymes and fat-dissolving surfactants, which are contained in good detergents," explains Stiftung Warentest the result.
If you value clean laundry, you should therefore stick to the proven color or heavy-duty detergents.
Heavy-duty detergent is particularly suitable for white laundry, while color detergent is used for colored laundry.
There are now enough organic alternatives for these too, which do without phosphates and microplastics and still keep up with conventional detergents.
(as)
