Categories: Parenting

Seventh Generation Free and Clear Chlorine Free Bleach: Review

When our daughter was a baby, 25 years ago, I used cloth diapers. It was a pain washing them, and chlorine bleach was used a lot to get the diapers white again. I did notice that over time, the chlorine really broke down the fibers of the cotton diapers, but I didn’t have any alternatives available to me that actually worked.

Fast forward about 15 years, and I am again having issues with chlorine bleach. We have a septic system on our property, and our leech field had failed. When the engineers designed our new system, I was given a short lesson on what not to use in my laundry. Chlorine bleach was definitely a product that I was told to avoid. Because bleach kills bacteria, it was harming our septic system, because they depend on bacteria for the “perking” that is necessary to break down waste. I did away with using chlorine bleach back then, and rarely use it today.

Over the years I have tried bleaching alternatives, such as 20 Mule Team Borax, and Oxi Clean, as well as laundry boosters to help restore clothes to their original white color. Nothing really did the great job that chlorine did, until I found a bleach alternative made by a company called Seventh Generation

Free & Clear Chlorine Free Bleach

Seventh Generation gets their name from the The Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy, which states in part, In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. They are committed to the environment, and make a complete line of health and household cleaning items.

Seventh Generations Free & Clear Chlorine Free Bleach comes in a 64 ounce white plastic container, that looks similar to the shape of bottle that your typical chlorine bleach comes in. It is non-toxic, hypo-allergenic, and degradable. My bottle also states that this contains no optical brighteners, no dyes or fragrances, no phosphates, and that it is safe for all septic and greywater systems. Unlike chlorine bleach, the Seventh Generation is also color safe, and is ultra concentrated. One bottle will clean 21 loads of laundry. There is no odor associated with this product, which is very refreshing. I have never cared for the smell of colorine.

The ingredients used are: natural oxygen safe bleach (hydrogen peroxide, which naturally degrates into oxygen and water), oxygen bleach stabilizer, deionized water. None of these ingredients cause any chronic health problems, and they are safe for our environment. The bottle states that buying this bleach alternative you are helping the environment. If every U.S. home used Free & Clear Chlorine Free Bleach in place of the chlorine bleach, 10.9 million less pounds of chlorine would enter the environment.

My Experience

I can’t say that Seventh Generation gets my whites as bright as chlorine bleach does, but it does a good enough job to keep me happy. The biggest concern is using this on my husbands white t-shirts, which tend to get discolored under the arms, but since I’ve been using Seventh Generation they have come out clean and soft.

Compared to using Borax, I find I am happier with Seventh Generation Chlorine Free Bleach. It’s so easy to use, and since it’s in a liquid form I don’t worry about it dissolving completely in my front load washing machine. Living in Alaska, our water is much colder, and even on the “warm” setting, water is quite cold and powders don’t always dissolve completely. The fact that this isn’t going to cause any white bleach stains on my clothing if it splashes accidentally also gives me peace of mind. I have ruined more than one expensive sweater when bleach spots suddenly appeared on them! One was a $150 Ralph Lauren sweater and I was just sick when I saw those small white spots. This product is so concentrated that it only requires 3 ounces per load. Compare that to the 3/4 of a cup of chlorine bleach is usually recommended!

Aside from the cleaning aspects, I am so glad that I am using a laundry aid that will not kill bacteria and harm the flora in my septic system. After spending $12,000 to put in a new leech field, believe me I am doing everything I can to keep it in perfect working condition, and using safe bleach alternatives plays heavily into that equation. If you are looking for a good bleach alternative, highly recommend Seventh Generation Chlorine Free Bleach. I paid $4.50 for my 64 ounce bottle, so it’s more expensive than chlorine bleach, but well worth the added cost.