How to make a detergent that doesn't soil as it cleans

Warm water, bubbles, soap and sheens. It all leads to a pleasing array of sparkling dishes, but what goes down the drain? That’s a question which both households and cleaning product manufacturers are increasingly grappling with. After all, no one likes the thought that cleanliness in the home might lead to pollution elsewhere.

So if you’re serious about green cleaning, where do you start? Biodegradability is an obvious first step, replacing the petrochemicals present in most detergents with plant-based ingredients – and so limiting the potentially harmful substances our ecosystems have to absorb.

But the use of natural ingredients does not, alone, make for a clean product. The traditional production process for surfactants – the active agent in detergents that allows them to emulsify grease and spread easily over surfaces – is an energy-intensive one. A reliance on 2-5 bar pressures, and temperatures of up to 100˚C, makes for a hefty carbon footprint. And these surfactants turn up in more places than you might think. It’s not just washing-up liquid, shampoo and other cosmetics but everything from paper production to the treatment of hide fibres for supple leather gloves.

But a six-year research project, funded by Ecover, has led to the launch of a new range of surfactants – from boat wax to glass spray – all produced at just 30˚C and ambient atmospheric pressure, through fermentation. This year it hit the shelves as the world’s first ‘EcoSurfactant’.

The key was finding just the right conditions – in terms of temperature, pressure and ventilation – for yeast to breed. That may sound rather technical, but in some respects it has a lot in common with a distinctly down-to-earth technology dating back thousands of years: the art of brewing beer.

The basic process is as follows: you put a water-soluble sugar and some non-water-soluble plant oil in a vessel, innoculate them with a yeast, heat to the right temperature and… stir. The result is a ‘sophorolipid’: a type of biological surfactant that can be produced quickly and simply, is a natural antimicrobial, has skin-friendly pH levels, and is 100% biodegradable.

What’s more, the waste can be used for compost, and the process is so efficient that Ecover is able to run its two industrial-scale production units – with an output of 10 tonnes of ‘EcoSurfactant’ per month – entirely on electricity from wind and solar power.  The company has also committed to sourcing all the necessary ingredients – rapeseed oil, sugar from sugar beet and yeast – in Europe, thereby cutting fuel and other transportation costs, and of course saving carbon emissions.

But Ecover’s task is not over yet. There’s more work to be done on making the product stable, and on meeting consumers’ expectations of its ‘foaming power’. And the company has set its sights beyond the washing-up bowl, hoping to roll out the new process to produce cleaning and treatment products for everything from laundry to… leather gloves.

– Peter Malaise is Concept Manager at Ecover

Ecover is a Forum for the Future partner.

7 December 2009

Peter Malaise