Dish Detergent - DIY and Zero-Waste – I've Done It!
I've finally created and tested a true DIY, zero-waste dish detergent. Only two ingredients needed. (Links below). It's truly effective and costs only about a dollar a liter to make. Yayy!
I’ve been making, creating, and perfecting DIY laundry detergent for years. (There are a lot of really bad, useless recipes out there, believe me.) But I’ve yet to find anyone who’s come up with a DIY, zero waste dish detergent out there in all of internet-land.
The key word is detergent. Not a soap. A detergent.
A detergent has a grease-cutting surfactant. Surfactants cut grease. Soap contains a saponified fat – a fat such as tallow (animal fat), or olive oil, coconut oil, or glycerin. I wanted something that would cut fat, not contained it.
During all my DIY laundry soap trial-and-errors, I discovered that many bar soaps would coagulate into a gel when grated and melted in boiling water. That’s great if you want to turn Coast deodorant soap into a body wash or even a bar of Doctor Bronner’s into a liquid laundry soap by adding borax. It didn’t work as dish detergent. It didn’t cut grease. The fatty stuff just floated in the dishwater.
I came across a dish detergent in bar form called Vim (as in vim-and-vigor). It’s been around for decades in Great Britain and Canada, but you have to use it in bar form; that is, melt it into a sink-full of hot water. I bought some, grated it, and it melted right away in hot water but didn’t coagulate into a gel at all. I wanted something gel-like; Dawn dish detergent comes to mind. I’m single and wash dishes one or two at a time – not a whole sink load.
During my laundry soap experimentations, I remembered coming across a retro, germicidal bar soap called Dettol from Great Britain. It jelled up like crazy when it had been grated and melted into boiling water – so much, that I kept having to dilute it just to get it into a pourable form. I stilled had a couple of bars left and took a look at the ingredients. Guess what? No saponified fat of any kind! It was not actually soap, but a strong, germicidal detergent in bar form.
Bingo!
I grated a half bar of Dettol, melted it into a liter of simmering water, let it cool into a gel, added it to my 2 liters of Vim liquid (made by melting a half bar of Vim into 2 liters of hot water), and hit it with an immersion blender. I ended up with three, one-liter squirt-bottles of thick, slightly foamy dish detergent, lemon-scented, and in a retro turquoise color. Nice!
But would it work? Would it cut grease and act as a liquid dish detergent?
The answer is a resounding ‘yes’!
I squirted it in a bowl of water, gave it a mix, and it stayed mixed; not floating to the top like the gelled soap did.
I coated a glass with margarine, gave a little squirt and swish, and the glass was sparkly clean.
For the real test, I coated my hands with Crisco, gave a squirt, and while washing my hands I noticed it was all released into a milky wash in the sink; my hands were squeaky clean in an instant.
Success! This stuff works!
And what a bargain! Yes, you have to procure Vim and Dettol, but a half bar of each results in 3 liters of dish detergent. Store it in a gallon container and add it to your little squirt bottle as you need it. Let’s break it down:
Vim: $14.00 for 3 bars = $4.66. Half a bar is $2.33
Dettol: $6.13 for 3 bars = $2.04. Half a bar is $1.02
So, for $3.34 you have 3 liters of really good dish detergent. And you made it yourself. And no plastic was used.
Is it all-natural? Oh, hell no! Was it tested on animals? Probably, Sixty years ago. Vim and Dettol have been around since the 1950s.
Like I said, for so long I wanted to find a DIY, Zero-waste dish detergent. I couldn’t find one. Now, I have one.
And you do, too.
