Have you ever used laundry detergent sheets?

[Roderick_Femm]

@DPRK

I not think the products in question are that new, though I could not tell you precisely when the first ones were marketed.

@wolfpup

If everything works, why would I switch to something else?

Because it is much cheaper?

Also because there is less (i.e. none at all, apparently) use of plastic?

[puzzlegal]

@Dewey_Finn

. Also, the ingredients and manufacturing processes used to make laundry sheets may not be as sustainable as the companies claim.” The article says that the products are mostly made in China so getting them here requires a lot of travel. And the sheets contain polyvinyl alcohol, the same polymer that laundry pods are wrapped in.

Bolding added.

[Roderick_Femm]

Polyvinyl Alcohol is a water-soluble synthetic polymer, which does not contribute to plastic pollution. From Wikipedia, as one example :

Tests showed that fish (guppies) are not harmed, even at a poly(vinyl alcohol) concentration of 500 mg/L of water.^[2]

Here is the reference for that claim; I haven’t read it for myself:

Hallensleben ML (2000). “Polyvinyl Compounds, Others”. Ullmann’s Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH. doi:10.1002/14356007.a21_743. ISBN 978-3-527-30673-2.

More from Wikipedia:

Not all PVA grades are readily biodegradable, but studies show that high water-soluble PVA grades such as the ones used in detergents can be readily biodegradable according to OECD screening test conditions.^[15]

Byrne, Dominic; Boeije, Geert; Croft, Ian; Hüttmann, Gerd; Luijkx, Gerard; Meier, Frank; Parulekar, Yash; Stijntjes, Gerard (13 March 2021). “Biodegradability of Polyvinyl Alcohol Based Film Used for Liquid Detergent Capsules: Biologische Abbaubarkeit der für Flüssigwaschmittelkapseln verwendeten Folie auf Polyvinylalkoholbasis”. Tenside Surfactants Detergents. 58 (2). De Gruyter Brill: 88–96. doi:10.1515/tsd-2020-2326. ISSN 0932-3414. Retrieved 14 January 2026.

So the use of plastics I was referring to was mainly the jugs used for both liquid detergent and (most?) pods, not the pods themselves.

[wolfpup]

@LSLGuy

For me it was that powders are messy and large boxes are hard to store in my constrained space. Large jugs of liquid are also hard to store.

I find it hard to believe that you can’t find room for roughly a 2-liter bottle of liquid detergent. I used to keep one or two on top of the washer when I had a front-loader; now that I have a top-loader, I just keep them on top of the dryer. (I actually have a bunch of cupboards above the machines in the laundry room, but they’re mostly empty because I don’t need them for anything.)

But as to the smallness and lightness of laundry detergent sheets, how much detergent could they possibly contain and how well could they therefore clean? Granted, the recommended quantities of typical liquid detergent are far higher than necessary, but even at far less than the recommended amount – I use just a fraction of the recommended amount – how does that compare with a wispy little laundry sheet that appears to contain almost nothing at all? How well does that clean?

Intuitively, one would think “not well”. And in practical tests, the answer matches intuition: “not well”:

Do Laundry Detergent Sheets Work as Well as Liquid? - Consumer Reports

Laundry Detergent Sheets Are Poor Cleaners. And Their Sustainability Claims...

[markn_1]

Bottom line, laundry sheets don’t work very well, sometimes requiring multiple washings to achieve what can be done with one wash using traditional detergents, they use more resources like water in their manufacture, and they use a lot of fossil fuels to transport them from China to the US. I suspect those factors outweigh the one (recyclable) plastic jug used by a gallon of detergent, which is amortized across a hundred or more washloads.

[LSLGuy]

What I noticed was all the sheets those folks tested were the ones claiming “eco friendly”. From brands touting a range of green products. What they did not test were sheets made by non-green mainstream companies for customers seeking convenience and functionality who’re indifferent to greenery.

[wolfpup]

Maybe so, but I still hold by my basic principle that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. The corollary being that if it’s done broke, then go ahead and try fixing it.

Thus, regarding dishwashers, I was disappointed in my traditional old powdered dishwasher detergent after the phosphorous ban, which resulted among other things in cloudy glassware. But now I’m delighted by the results of the modern new pods which leave dishes and glassware sparkling clean.

But, regarding laundry, since Tide Oxy works very well for me and I’m not burdened by having to store a bottle or two of liquid detergent in the laundry room, I have no interest whatsoever in experimenting with newfangled stuff that may or may not work. I don’t have full access to the Consumer Reports article but it didn’t seem that they were impressed by any of the laundry sheets compared to Tide liquid detergent, and I’m not surprised.