Open the cupboard where you keep your laundry supplies and count what's in there: a jug of liquid detergent, maybe a box of powder, a softener bottle, a stain spray. Most of it is packaging, and most of it gets replaced every few weeks. It doesn't have to work that way. Here's an honest guide to laundry detergent alternatives – what each one is good at, where it falls short, and how to actually use it.
The trouble with the detergent jug
Liquid detergent almost always comes in a plastic jug. Recycling helps, but every jug still has to be produced, shipped and processed – and at one or two loads a week, they add up quickly, household by household, year after year.
Then there's dosing. Detergent caps are generous by design, and pouring a bit extra "for good measure" is how most of us learned to wash. Extra detergent doesn't make laundry cleaner, though: it leaves residues in the water and in your clothes, and it empties the jug faster. Add the fragrances and preservatives that ride along with every load, and there's a solid case for rethinking the routine.
The free option: conkers and ivy
Horse chestnuts (conkers) and ivy leaves both contain saponins – plant compounds that behave like a mild soap. If there's a park nearby, your next detergent is lying on the ground every autumn.
To wash with conkers: quarter about eight to ten of them, pour roughly 300 ml of hot water over the pieces and leave them to steep overnight. Strain the milky liquid into the detergent drawer and run your machine as usual. Peel the conkers first if you're washing whites, so the brown skins can't discolour anything. Chopped and dried, one autumn haul will carry you deep into the year.
Ivy is the year-round version: tear ten to twelve fresh leaves a little, put them in a mesh laundry bag or an old sock, and drop it straight into the drum.
The honest bit: saponins wash gently. That's fine for everyday clothes with light soiling, but heavily soiled loads and stains need pre-treating – and you'll be collecting, chopping and brewing on a regular basis.
Laundry sheets: light, but single-use
Detergent sheets fix the packaging and the dosing problem in one go: each strip is pre-portioned and usually ships in a slim cardboard envelope. For travelling, they're hard to beat.
They remain a consumable, though – one sheet, one wash, then you buy more. Sheets still clean with surfactants, many are scented, and the strip itself is typically made with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a synthetic water-soluble polymer whose complete breakdown in wastewater treatment is still being studied. If sheets suit your life, read the ingredients list before you commit.
Washing with magnesium: a pouch that lasts
Hexawash takes a different approach altogether. Inside the small canvas pouch sit 120 g of magnesium pellets. In water, the magnesium forms magnesium hydroxide and raises the pH to around 10.5 – the level at which dirt, oil and odours release from fabric. That's the same job surfactants do in a regular detergent, handled here by the magnesium reaction instead.
The difference is longevity: one pouch keeps washing for more than 300 loads, which is about a year for most households. It washes without fragrances, enzymes or preservatives, is hypoallergenic and perfume-free, and contains no parabens, phosphates, sulphates or surfactants. Expect your laundry to come out smelling neutral rather than perfumed – if you're used to heavily scented detergent, give your nose a week to adjust. The pouch itself is organic cotton canvas, sewn from offcuts of SuperBee's beeswax wrap production.
How to wash with a magnesium pouch
- Soak first (recommended): give the pouch 15 minutes in water before the cycle, or use your machine's soak programme. For smelly loads like gym kit, soak the clothes along with it.
- Into the drum: the pouch goes in with the laundry – no dosing, no drawer.
- Any cycle works: hot or cold, hard or soft water – the result stays the same.
- Hang it up: let the pouch dry with your laundry and it's ready for the next load.
To check whether it's spent, weigh it: new, the pouch is around 150 g; once it drops below 80 g, the magnesium is used up. Then you can bury it in the garden – the cotton breaks down and the remaining magnesium feeds the soil. As with any mild washing method, treat stubborn stains before the wash, for example with a stain remover bar.
Where to start
If you enjoy foraging and don't mind a little prep, conkers and ivy cost nothing. If you travel a lot, sheets earn their place in a rucksack, single-use or not. And if you want one decision that covers a whole year of laundry, a reusable magnesium pouch is the lowest-effort switch of the three.
Whichever route you take, every jug you don't buy counts. You'll find more ideas for a plastic-free home in our Kitchen & Home category.
