Ecover Morning Fresh Fabric Softener

Ecover Fabric Softener

Softening my Heart with Every Wash

So I’m a bit of a greenie. An Eco warrior. A friend to the planet. A green goddess even. Somewhere in the great evolutionary process, I lost sight of the need to persuade the world that green is best and that we should all be doing more to save the planet from burning up in a frazzled ball of too hot summers and freezing winters and melting ice caps and rising ...
...know if you read my Ecover Washing Powder review – but I did it, and it didn’t jump up and bite me on the bum! What it did do was make me feel even more pleased with myself for my efforts and look to further those efforts in the type of fabric softener to choose. Now I know vinegar does just as well as the silky, creamy, bottled fabric softener we all know and love, but I haven’t been that brave yet! The choice to change from my regular Comfort brand ... more

Ecover Fabric Softener

Softening my Heart with Every Wash

So I’m a bit of a greenie. An Eco warrior. A friend to the planet. A green goddess even. Somewhere in the great evolutionary process, I lost sight of the need to persuade the world that green is best and that we should all be doing more to save the planet from burning up in a frazzled ball of too hot summers and freezing winters and melting ice caps and rising CO2 levels, and became content simply with leading my life as environmentally sound as I possibly could. People will choose their own paths, and make their own choices on how to wash their clothes, how many plane trips to take, whether to buy a four by four or a bicycle. And I can’t change people. But I can change me.

Changing my washing powder was a fairly big step and took me AGES, as you will know if you read my Ecover Washing Powder review – but I did it, and it didn’t jump up and bite me on the bum! What it did do was make me feel even more pleased with myself for my efforts and look to further those efforts in the type of fabric softener to choose. Now I know vinegar does just as well as the silky, creamy, bottled fabric softener we all know and love, but I haven’t been that brave yet! The choice to change from my regular Comfort brand of fabric conditioner to Ecover was a fairly easy one. I’ve used Ecover products for over five years now, and there’s a great degree of trust between me and the brand. So when I switched my washing powder, I did the same with my fabric conditioner too. One more step to making my footprint on the world a little smaller, a little more delicate, a little more, well, noble.

As with all my Ecover reviews, let me introduce them to you, just in case you’ve missed them thus far….

Who are Ecover?

Well, they are the revolutionaries who first stood up and said “wait, there is another way!”

In Belgium, in 1980, Ecover was founded as a pioneering company, selling phosphate free products. Phosphate free is good, by the way. As a company, Ecover is very concerned about environmental issues and in 1992 they opened the world’s first ecological factory – it has a green “live” roof! If you read the back of your fabric softener bottle, it will tell you that this product is made at this very factory!

Every part of their business is covered by ecological policy, not just the products and production of them, but everything else, like marketing and sales (for example, they will refill your old bottles of washing up liquid, collecting them and delivering them back, free of charge. You just pay for the actual refill – pretty good!)
Ecover now have sites in the UK and USA, and sell their products in over 20 countries worldwide. All of their products are designed and made keeping environmental benefits to humans and animals as well as the planet herself, at the forefront, and for this, I applaud them! They also make me feel noble and goddess-like, and for this, I thank them.

www.ecover.com

So Soft, this Fabric Softener.

So I know the thing about fabric softener is that we really shouldn’t buy it ‘cos vinegar does the same thing and is cheaper and you can make it yourself, but you know what? I like fabric softener, I like how it smells, and I’ll probably keep on buying it. So there. It makes my clothes lovely and soft and I feel like I have more consumer power buying this than buying vinegar. So double there.
The thing we all sometimes forget about (did it today – drank a whole bottle of lucozade. Even though I know how horribly bad it is for me. I just conveniently forgot…) how much unknown “stuff” is in the things we use every day. All those artificial perfumes in our shower gel which are really just small cocktails of chemicals waiting to be absorbed into our skin and lurk, indefinitely, causing untold and unseen damage. All the chemicals we flush down our loo every day, or spray onto our kitchen work surfaces in an effort to keep “hygienic”.

Why do we do it? Is it because we don’t care about the amount of chemicals in pretty much everything we use…face cream, toothpaste, shampoo. Do we just accept that when reading the ingredients on our daily products, that it’s okay that we don’t know and don’t care what they are, what they mean?

You see, I think if we were given the choice, if we were given all the information, we wouldn’t use half the stuff we do, and we’d find alternatives to the other half. I like to think that I have that choice. And that I accept it with open arms. Perhaps you’ll want to do the same. Perhaps not.

The Fabric Softening Experience.

Comfort was my fabric softener of choice for such a long time – right through my childhood years and into adulthood – that I have no experience of any other way of softening my clothes. But I have to say, Ecover beats comfort on smell factor, on softness, and on the amount you need to achieve said attributes.
Added to this wondrousness is the fact that it has no petrochemical based ingredients, exceeds legislation on biodegradability and has a minimum impact on aquatic life, makes it top of the tree for me in fabric softening stakes.
When using it, I just put a capful of the liquid into the fabric softener dispenser in my machine (or half a capful in the sink if I’m hand washing), and hit the start button.
The smell of this fabric softener is lovely – called “Morning Fresh” on the front of the bottle, it is a delicate mix of lavendery, lemony, summer morning, clean clothes on the line, freshness. And because it’s got no chemical nasties in it, it’s an equally delicate opaque white colour. Simple, fresh and effective!

There’s no guideline on the bottle as to how many washes it will do, but I use a capful in each wash and will wash maybe 5 times a week – a 1 litre bottle will last me a good 5-6 weeks, and it’s normally running out about the same time as the washing powder. I don’t manage to get the bottles re-filled at the moment, but I do recycle them as they empty, and every part of the package (bottle, lid and label) are all fully recyclable, which is great news.

I think for me, one of the main plus points of using Ecover products is how gentle they are on the skin – I have no worries at all about using this when the baby comes along, and I know my sister, whose husband and 2 children have problems with eczema, uses it without any problem at all. So I can thoroughly recommend it on that part.

The All Important Cost!

I buy my Ecover from Tesco at the moment, though I’m trying to source it from a local shop, so that Mr Tesco doesn’t get more of my money than he needs to. A 1 litre bottle of Ecover fabric softener will cost you £2.49. Compare that with Comfort, which can cost anything from £1.30 for 2 litres of their standard blue flavour, to £1.98 for their Comfort Creme Fabric Conditioner with Jojoba Oil (750ml) and you can see there is a big difference in price. If you normally buy the fancy (fake chemical based) scented products, then you’re likely to see a big drop in price by switching to Ecover. It’s certainly not the cheapest fabric softener on the market, but in my opinion, it’s the best, for me, my conscience, my body and my impact on the planet. Plus you often find with cheaper brands, you have to use more to get results. I would never just use one capful of comfort – three or four maybe, though I never counted the amounts in capfuls, simply pouring the liquid into the relevant drawer on the machine… So what appears to be the economical choice often isn’t…

My Final Thoughts.

I’m glad I switched my washing and fabric softening products over to Ecover. It was really quite a difficult choice for me to make. Harder than it ought to have been, really. But I did it, and I’m ever so pleased. I’m glad there is a product out there that can help me to make a difference to the world I live in. People all over the world now are so much more aware than ever before of the impact our choices and actions have not just on our planet, but on our bodies too, but sometimes it’s hard to change, or it’s hard to find an alternative to what you’ve used and you parents have used for years. Some habits, especially the ones we don’t even think about as we trail round the supermarket blithely putting the things we easily recognise into our trolleys as if on autopilot. But once you’ve done it, once you’ve changed, you’ll wish you did it years ago. It’s not hard at all really. In the end, things are only as difficult as we make them. So go on. Save the world – buy Ecover. Or don’t. It’s your choice.

Thank you for reading, Kate x 

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