more clean thoughts...

This morning I picked up dish soap from the Sunac market on Metropolitan and Union Ave in Brooklyn. I had a choice between Ajax and Joy brands (in the $1.99 - $3.50 range) and then brands like Meyer and J.R. Watkins (below), more like $5.99 - $6.50. Quite a price differential, but I squashed my penny-pinching tendencies and went for the Watkins soap, despite its schtick-worthy 'conscience-cleaning power,' a pitch clearly targeting softies like me.

Which led me to think: how much of this choice is about keeping my conscience clean, and what will it actually mean in impact on my health, the water supply and overall environment? What is Ajax dish detergent's level of harm?

Turns out, many of them contain petroleum-based compounds sodium lauryl sulfate and diethanolamine, which besides creating suds, can also combine to create cancer-causing nitrosamines (awesome). Ajax does not, and its label also boasts 'no phosphates.' While Ajax's packaging doesn't list ingredients (hm) its website does, and explains each ingredient's function.

I remember at a very young age being read a list of what foods you should definitely buy organic, like berries, and which you could buy non-organic and not worry too much, like avocados. At this point, with the breadth of information (and opinion) in the world and online, individuals could benefit from a similar top-10 list, or even better - an app! - that told them which products and services were most important to buy sustainable or green. (I do like this top 10 list of products you should never buy again).

I don't know if I will buy the $6 dish detergent every time, but I'd feel much more comfortable making this decision if I knew that Ajax detergent was harmful in ways x, y and z. We have so much information at our fingertips: we just need help extracting the meaning.