Laundry Liquid, Concentrate

Details

A three-times concentrate for machine or hand wash, at 24 percent total actives against the roughly 8 percent of a standard supermarket liquid. One litre runs 33 loads at 30 ml. Most of what a thin laundry liquid sells you is water, packed in plastic and trucked across the country, and the way that is hidden is by quoting a price per litre and never a dose. So here is the arithmetic in full, including the part that does not flatter us. This liquid costs Rs 17.44 a load at the 500 ml bottle, Rs 15.12 at the 1 litre and Rs 13.62 at the 2 litre refill. Our own top-load powder costs Rs 9.96. A liquid is dearer per wash than a powder, always, and anyone showing you otherwise is comparing their concentrate against somebody's diluted rival. What the extra buys is real and specific: it dissolves instantly in cold water, so a hand wash in a bucket gets full strength, and it leaves no undissolved builder to dry as a chalky cast on a black kurta, which is the one job powder is genuinely bad at.

• Full surfactant system named and it adds to 24 percent: C12-15 alcohol ethoxylate 7 EO at 12 percent, sodium linear alkylbenzene sulphonate 8 percent, coco-glucoside 4 percent
• Enzymes with figures: protease 0.5 percent, amylase 0.2 percent, mannanase 0.1 percent, active from 20 C. Lipase is deliberately absent, because a lipase only works across a drying step between one wash and the next, so in a single cold cycle it does nothing but appear on a label
• Measured pH 8.4 as supplied and 7.9 in the wash bath, at 27 C
• Preserved with phenoxyethanol at 0.9 percent, and the replacement is named on purpose. We took out MIT and CMIT, the isothiazolinones behind much laundry-related contact dermatitis, and we did not substitute benzisothiazolinone, which is the same chemical family wearing a different name
• Sodium benzoate would be the friendlier-sounding choice and it would not work, because benzoate is only effective below about pH 5 and this liquid sits at 8.4
• No optical brightener, no chlorine bleach, no oxygen bleach, no phosphate, no dye, no perfume
• Fragrance-free, so nothing from the EU list of 26 declarable allergens is present to declare
• Colour safe by construction rather than by claim, since there is no bleach of any kind in the formula, so a black kurta stays black and an indigo stays indigo
• The bottle and the 2 litre pouch hold the same concentrate at the same 24 percent. There is no watered-down refill version, which is a real trick in this category
• Enzymes denature above about 60 C, so a hot wash destroys the part you paid most for. Use it at 20 to 40 C