Everyone who buys washing-up liquid is being warned to make a change in 2025 to help reduce the impact on our seas. Washing-up liquid is something we all use every day, and can even be used for all sorts of household cleaning tasks like cleaning limescale from the shower or unclogging a drainpipe.
But regular washing up liquid can do all sorts of harm to the environment every time you wash up, say environmental experts. A combination of harsh chemicals mean that every time your sink drains into the sewers, you could be putting aquatic life at risk.
In fact, the warning on the back of a bottle of a leading brand of washing up liquid says: “Harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects. Keep out of reach of children.”
According to Sustainably Lazy, among several other sources, washing up liquid has ‘surfactants’, which are the active ingredient which strips dirt off dishes and keeps it suspended in the water. But, they warned: “Mainstream brands use fossil fuel-derived surfactants, many of which end up in rivers and harm aquatic life.”
Ethical Superstore backs up the warning. It says: “Most conventional washing up liquids contain sodium lauryl sulphate or SLS. This acts as a surfactant, meaning it reduces the surface tension of the water and creates foam, leading to extra cleaning power. But it’s not without its issues.
“SLS doesn’t just dissolve away to nothing when it’s used. After it goes down the plughole it can end up lingering in our waterways, endangering marine life and doing untold damage to the ecosystem.”
A study in the Journal of Applied Microbiology revealed the extent to which surfactants can damage marine life.
It said: “The use of surfactants in households and industries is inevitable and so is their discharge into the environment, especially into the water bodies as effluents. Being surface-active agents, their utilization is mostly seen in soaps, detergents, personal care products, emulsifiers, wetting agents, etc.
“Surfactants are capable of penetrating the cell membrane and thus cause toxicity to living organisms. Accumulation of these compounds has been known to cause significant gill damage and loss of sight in fish.”
As well as the ingredients, the bottles themselves can cause harm to the environment. The UK produces more than 170 million tonnes of waste a year, but only one third of plastic packaging is recycled.
Burnham Coastguard Rescue Team said back in 2018 that it had found a bottle of washing-up liquid on the beach, which was 47 years old and had not broken down.
It urged people to “try and reduce our day-to-day plastic use, which is difficult with current manufacturing.”
If you are ready to ditch plastic bottles, for £4.50 at Ocado, Fairy sells a refill carton for its plastic bottles which allows you to refill a typical Fairy liquid bottle “more than twice.”
Fairy says: “Fairy Max Power antibacterial washing up liquid refill carton allows you to refill your 370ml upside-down bottle more than twice and helps you to save up to 85% of the plastic. The refill is recyclable.
“The Max Power bottle with no flip cap gives you Fairy’s ultimately convenient cleaning experience. It helps you get out of the kitchen faster by making washing dishes fast and easy.”
Other options include solid washing up liquid bars, which tend to work better in soft water areas than hard water areas, and also, environmentally-friendly washing up liquids which are plant-based and refillable, which contain none of the harmful chemicals that regular ‘dish soap’ washing up liquid does.