an investigation of domestic laundry in europe - habits ... - SIFO

Assessment of the functional performance of European laundry processes and detergents 67as the compact detergent. This is in contradiction with the pattern we see inSpain, where the results clearly show that the detergents that are most used inthe market also shows the highest wash performance. The most commonlaundry process for white textiles in Spain and Norway (respectively) seem tohave about the same average value on wash performance even though theNorwegian detergent is tested using a higher wash temperature and lower waterhardness. The Norwegian detergents seem to have a lower wash performancethan we would expect when tested at the most common Norwegian condition.This indicates that the Norwegian detergent is not properly adapted tothe common Norwegian laundry processes. Another possibility is that thedosage on the label is too low. We may conclude that Norwegians consume alot more energy during wash than the Spanish to gain the same wash performancefor their white textiles.All the liquid detergents we tested have a significantly lower wash performancethan the compact detergents tested. In fact, the wash performance whenusing water is similar to using the Spanish detergent. The dosage used for theSpanish detergent is quite high, and this may have caused the very bad resultsfor this particular detergent. The low results, combined with the extremelyhigh foam level during testing, may indicate that a different programme withless mechanical action and less programme duration is more likely to be usedfor this detergent in Spain. The liquid detergents from the other countries aresignificantly better than using just water, but in terms of wash performancealone we would advise consumers to use other types of detergents. However,with regard to rinse performance, we find that the liquid detergents have highrinse efficiency compared to the other types of detergents. This is valuableinformation for people with allergic reactions from residual detergent afterwash.