Laundry Detergent and Petroleum
Posted April 11th, 2008 by sherrilllinnI have a question regarding petroleum based laundry detergent and non-petroleum based detergent. Does popular liquid and powder detergent contain petroleum or only powder? Do the petroleum required to make detergent actually come from raw petroleum or is it a byproduct of the gasoline industry? I guess my question boils down to--Does my use of a petroleum based laundry product create a demand for oil or is it coming from another source? Also, with the price of oil skyrocketing--does that also affect the price of laundry detergent? I haven't seen any press on the issue.
Most conventional cleaning products are made with ingredients derived from petroleum. Petroleum consists of long chains of carbon atoms connected to each other. When the petroleum is refined, these long chains are broken into smaller chains. Some chains have just two carbons (this is called 'ethylene' and is used to make many products, such as the plastic, 'polyethylene'), some chains have eight carbons (this is called 'octane' and i bet you can tell where it is used), and there are other chains with just about any number of carbons you can count on your fingers and toes. Conventional cleaning product manufacturers combine these smaller chains of carbon to make the solvents and other cleaning agents used in their products. This is true whether the products are liquids or powders.
"Natural" cleaning products are made with oils derived from plants. The most commonly used plant oil is coconut oil. Corn oil, soy oil, and palm oil are also used.
In general, manufacturing a "natural" cleaner uses less energy and produces less green house gases than using a conventionl cleaner. Also, generally, plant-derived ingredients are more expensive than petroleum-derived ingredients (compare the price of a gallon of gasoline to a gallon of canola oil).