This year, Americans are spending nearly $11.4 billion on laundry pods. Made popular at first by the pandemic focus on germ fighting, the pod market is now mainstream and expected to grow to $18.2 billion by 2032!
But are all these pods good for us?
We get this question all the time from our customers. Do laundry detergent pods work better than other detergents? Does their convenience have a downside? Customers want to know if we recommend them.
We’ll begin by stating clearly that we don’t use them at Oceanside Cleaners. For our laundry cleaning, we use powdered detergents specially made for commercial use. Here are four of our strong reasons why we avoid pods and recommend that you do, too:
- Pods present potential poison danger to kids and pets. Marketers urged pod makers to make them look flashy, with swirls, pockets of color and shiny plastic. Unfortunately, this made pods look like candy, good enough to eat, especially when seen by children and pets. As of October 2023, U.S. poison centers handled 8,245 cases of child pod poisonings. Thousands of pets, mostly dogs, also ate the pods (often getting a form of pneumonia). Manufacturers learned that child-proof containers are not foolproof.
- Pods can be like a hand grenade that could go off. Touching pods present two dangers. The first is from the plastic coating, or film, which contains polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a plastic that isn’t biodegradable (so not great for the environment). PVA contact with the skin in some people causes contact dermatitis. Powder or liquid laundry detergents that you don’t touch are safer. Other handling problems exist. Pods might split open and allow the contents to be ingested. There’s more. The concentrated detergent within pods can cause skin or eye irritation upon contact. If broken or punctured, the contents can cause skin burns.
- Pods handicap your cleaning options. Because the detergent in pods is pre-measured, you may be using too much or too little. Pre-packaging gives less flexibility in other ways, too. You can’t use the detergent itself to pre-stain a soiled spot. Many pod users complain to us about white spots on their clothing due to incomplete dissolving of the plastic.
- Pods are expensive. Many studies have compared the cost of using pods to using liquid or powder detergent. They’ve found that pods generally cost about 50% more. If you have a household with lots of laundry, that can add up fast.
Instead of pods, we use powdered detergents
Like they say, the proof is in the pudding. We’re professional cleaners, and we don’t use pods for the reasons stated above. We use and recommend powdered detergents for laundry. Yes, it’s a little messier to pour out a measure, but doing it by hand enables us to be precise when addressing the exact soiling issue.
Also, we can’t risk damage of pod plastic clogging up our machinery. Or pod detergent staining our customer’s clothes when one of the ingredients comes in contact with the fabric before dissolving. And we commit to using the most environmentally safe cleaning solutions we can find.
We’re always happy to advise you on washing and stain treatments and techniques. Stop by any time. Good cleaning takes skill and experience. It’s never as easy as tossing a pod into the wash.