Water has a cleaning action by itself, especially when it is hot. Just think about cooking pasta: when we add salt to the water, it soon dissolves. The same thing happens to soil, particularly to powder or dry mud.
Well… why detergents are requested? There are various reasons. First of all, soil is not only powder: it is often greasy, as it may come from food, from mechanic works or simply from oily hair or hands. Water by itself is not able to dissolve greasy soil, as grease tends first to float, then to stick to surfaces all around, for example inside the washing machine or upon the same clothes it came from. Specific ingredients for degreasing are the surfactants contained in detergents; also alkaline pH is useful in removing grease. Sedimentation of soil upon clothes is prevented by antiredeposition agents: if soil remains suspended in water instead of falling on fibres, it will be easily carried away out of the drain.
In addition there are other types of soil, as food proteins, which need specific treatments, and other critical parameters, as water hardness, which may condition the washing quality and must be managed with the appropriate ingredients.
They are even more important if we wash by machine: laundry by-hand makes easier to compensate for lack of detergent ingredients with “elbow grease”, that is our care in rubbing clothes by hand. In washing machine, there is little to be done: if water is not added with detergent, or detergent is to little, or the product does not contain useful ingredients, then laundry will be unsatisfactory, getting worse every wash, since washing machine will get dirtier and dirtier too.
The best thing is to make laundry with an ecological detergent whose ingredients are specific for all the various kind of soils, working at low temperatures too, showing antiredeposition properties, as Bensos’ products do.
Leave a Reply