Powder laundry detergents make up a small portion of the laundry detergent market, so many people may not even know that they still exist. If you didn’t grow up using the powders at home and go out of your way to look for them, you may never see them. According to a 2019 article in Chemical & Engineering News, a publication produced by the American Chemical Society, powder laundry detergents were still incredibly popular in “India, China, Latin America, and elsewhere in the developing world.” Further in the article, it states, “And even in the most modern U.S. cities, powders have their niches, particularly in neighborhoods where people may have grown up elsewhere.”
When my mom was growing up in the Dominican Republic, powder laundry detergent was more affordable and more widely available in local stores. And in the humid, hard-to-reach landscape of her hometown, bringing home a large bag of powder laundry detergent once every couple of months was easier than making more frequent trips to pick up plastic jugs of liquid detergent.
Powder laundry detergent was also easier to use to hand-wash clothing before my mom’s family had a washing machine at home. She often helped my grandmother do laundry for pay in a small stream just behind her childhood home. Because powder laundry detergent is lighter than liquid detergent, it was easier to carry the right amount needed for the clothes they’d be washing that day. It’s also more shelf-stable than liquid laundry detergent, which can separate at high temperatures common in the D.R.
When she arrived in the U.S., my mom continued the custom of using powder laundry detergent. She uses a powder detergent today because she swears it cleans better, a 13-pound bag of powder laundry detergent lasts a very long time, and she enjoys being able to dissolve the powder in water to use across the whole home to clean.
My mom isn’t the only one who still stands by powder laundry detergent in her laundry routine. Horacio Perez Sandoval, senior account manager at CR, told me his wife uses powder laundry detergent at home and is a big advocate for this type of detergent. She says that in her experience, powder laundry detergent is easier to measure, dissolves better in water, doesn’t stain clothes, yields more loads of laundry for less money, and—because she buys her powder detergent in large bags—produces less plastic waste than liquid laundry detergent.
Our associate director of social media, Daniela Nuñez, told me her brother recently switched back to powder laundry detergent. He felt that new formulations had been changing for the worse, so he decided to “go back to old-school detergent.” While this may not be the case according to CR’s lab tests, sometimes going back to an old way of doing things can feel like an improvement.
