Laundry products for greywater systems

So I am thinking of having a diverter installed so my laundry waste water runs into a mulch basin outside the house.

Naturally, the next question is:  What kind of products can I use that is safe for the soil, the plants and the aquifer?

You're not supposed to use bleach, or detergents with whiteners or enzymes or surfactants (whatever they are) or boron and some other ingredients.

Just recently (somewhere), I read that if a product doesn't specifically say it's okay for greywater, it probably isn't.  So what IS safe to use?  And the answer is..... (drum roll)

Bio Pac and Oasis Cleaning Products:  http://www.bio-pac.com/cleaners/history/

Environmentally friendly, not animal tested, safe for the chemically sensitive.

"Our Oasis line of products is fully biocompatible. This means you can use the resulting greywater to water your plants. The product actually breaks down into valuable plant nutrients. Oasis cleaners are suitable for both greywater, septic and municipal sewerage systems. "

So there's at least ONE product out there...

Sue

i have to buy HE laundry products for my front loader..the 3 x kind..and it only uses about 1 T of liquid soap..per load..

i had thought about having the greywater put onto the soil as well..but right now we will have to leave it the way it is..maybe later we will recycle it but don't have the time to do the plumbing for it.

Surfactant is basically a fancy word for soap. It is any chemical that acts to stabilize the polar relationship between oil and water by reducing the surface tension between the two. Thus allowing the two to mix. It doesn't matter if you use a 100% naturally grown organic soap, if it stabilizes oil and water then it is a surfactant.

jeremiah is right. some of that stuff might just be a marketing gimick.

Soapnuts - 100% natural safe product straight from the tree.

Try betterlifegoods.com in the US or Amazon in the UK (they were the best prices that I found).

I should have also added: some surfactants are safe while most are not.

I ordered a small batch of soap nuts.  Very interesting info!

I've been fascinated by the Greywater Guerillas who recommend:

[li]Oasis Laundry Detergent[/li]
[li]ECOS liquid detergent[/li]
[li]Dr. Bronner's liquid soap[/li]

.
On their main greywater page, they specifically recommend avoiding salt/sodium in soap that might end up on plants. And they said greywater is more alkaline, and acid-loving plants might not tolerate it well.

Though knowing you, Sue, you've probably already researched these pieces of it!

Ive been making my own for about 3 years now.  We'd like to put in a greywater collection system and I wondered if my recipe is compatible???  Washing soda, bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), pure castille soap, a few drops of essential oils (whatever takes my fancy when I'm 'brewing') and some water.  Thoughts?

We just moved to the pacific NW a few months ago.  We are small family farmers and bought 20 acres to start where we produce raw dairy and grassfed meats.  Anyway, I started my first larger garden this year.  We have a huge family by todays standards and we do a lot of laundry.  It disturbed me that all that laundry water would end up the in the septic system, even with an HE washer.  So, we bought an old wringer washer (actually 3 but thats another story) from Craig's List.  I fill the washer in the morning with water and a handful of grated soap that I make (I have a goats milk soap business) and let the laundry soak for a few hours.  Then we agitate it, wring it and drain it into a big tub.  This water gets baled and we water the garden and fruit trees with it.  I am hoping the soap helps keep pests away and so far that seems to be the case.  Then we fill the tub again, rinse the clothes in that, wring them and hang them outside to dry.  We then put soap in the rinse water and put the next load into soak.  We do this whole cycle 3-4 times a day.  Also, doing laundry outside is very enjoyable, I will miss doing it this way in the dead of winter.

Gosh, that's real dedication!  It sounds like a full-time job but lovely homely images come to mind.  Real homesteading  .  I must admit that I did think about hand-washing our stuff and then putting it through a mangle (also to reduce electricity consumption as it's our long-term plan to go off-grid) but finding an old mangle here in France is not proving easy.  I'll keep looking.

I hadn't heard of soapnuts.

I did know of shampoo ginger (use the flower stalk juice), soaproot, soapwort, and that the seeds of quinoa, lamb's quarter, and related grains are coated in useful saponins.
*  *  *  *
There's some chance that washing soda will eventually be an issue, unless there's a way for Na to drain away. 
*  *  *  *
There are many kinds of bleach.  Traditional chlorine bleach is probably the only problematic ones; peroxide (sometimes blended with washing soda, trade name OxyClean...again, OK if your land can discharge sodium) and ozone are found in nature.  Aerobic life handles them just fine.  In fact, most life makes peroxidase enzymes: your own enzymes cause peroxide to bubble in a wound, even though it will sit in the bottle for years, and doesn't bubble much on the q-tip until some blood mixes in.  It also bubbles when it hits bacteria in the cracks of your sink drain, due to different enzymes they make for the same purpose...unless you keep things cleaner than I do.

I have one of those HE washers and I use Dr. Wood's Pure Black soap. I use it to wash my body, my hair, my laundry, my dishes. There may be better stuff out there, but it is def safe for the washing machine and it smells really good

Soap nuts offer one advantage: if you live in Zone 8 or warmer, you can grow your own.

As per JL Hudsons:

SAPINDACEAE. Warm-region trees and shrubs with attractive foliage.
—Sapindus Mukorossi. (10) SAPN-30. Packet: $3.00
'CHINESE SOAPBERRY', 'REETHA'. Evergreen tree to 45 feet, with large 16" pinnate leaves and small white flowers in clusters at the branch-tips in summer, followed by yellow to orange-brown 3/4" fruits. India to Japan. Zone 8. The fruits are rich in saponin and have been used for soap, in shampoo, as a food additive, and medicinally. Nick seed and give 3 months cold treatment.

I hate to be negitive. But here I go.

I agree with the grey water. Rock on. As a former desert dweller I know water is life. As an educated individual I understand chemistry. Washin with a natural soap is and does work very well. You can make your own soap with natural products from the store easy enough. But lets take that a step further.

I work for a living. I am often exposed to resins, grease, and unknown chemicals that get on me and my clothing. Even in a natural setting on the farm, our clothing is exposed. That will go into your grey water from any washing you do. Also, I do bleach my undies and such. Because I hate jock itch and foot rot. I know everyone is tearing out their hair about it. In small amounts I bleach. I do not trust what is most personal care products as there are little studies as to what it will break down into. Do you want all that in your food? What are you really putting on the ground? Many products have salt in them. You may be doing more harm than good. What is really in that grey water?

We hope nothing dangerous.

I do not want that water on a food crop for me or my animals. Trees and ornamental is ok. Non food products

I used my grey water on my plants and bamboo in the desert. I had a septic there also. MY roses were right on top of it and did very well. Here in the Midwest I have no issues with using my septic. It is well designed and what water I send down it is filtered back into the ground water or the trees around it. I feel that grey water can and should be used, but if you have proper septic, unless your in a true arid environment you may be giving your water back to the ground in a good way with your septic. Just throwing that out there.

If you have a water softener that uses salt. That salt is being dumped into the ground. Hmmmmmm, something to think about.

I use soapnuts and vinegar, the vinegar if clothes are very dirty ! A lot of the time I use nothing and clothes comes out pretty clean !

I'm looking around online, trying to find out if anyone has concluded if laundry water that had OxiClean in it is okay for grey water to be added any or all of lawn, trees or food garden.
I see Sodium Percarbonate and Sodium Carbonate as 2 of the ingredients in it.

Anyone here know about OxiClean?

Thanks!
Ted

We use Ecos plus, we can get it at Sam's club. Says it's grey water safe and is around $13 for 252 HE loads, 126 standard.

Ted Coakley wrote:I'm looking around online, trying to find out if anyone has concluded if laundry water that had OxiClean in it is okay for grey water to be added any or all of lawn, trees or food garden.
I see Sodium Percarbonate and Sodium Carbonate as 2 of the ingredients in it.

Anyone here know about OxiClean?

Thanks!
Ted

@Ted - I am very interested in your question and have been wondering the same myself. I am starting a new thread entitled "Oxygen bleach" here in the Grey Water forum to explore this topic in general (though if any permies moderators suggest that it fits better under another forum - "Homestead"? "Toxin-ectomy"? - we could move it). Below is a direct link to the new thread.

Permies > Grey Water > Oxygen Bleach

Soap (not detergent) is fine for plants, it does kill pests when put onto plants. You cannot wash diapers and put the greywater in your garden for obvious reasons. Vinegars and Salt based cleaners (Borax, etc..) may be detrimental eventually to your ground. But grated soap (REAL soap not detergent) or liquid plant soap (Castile) should be absolutely safe for your ground. If you work in a toxic environment and wash your clothing with toxic chemicals, you should use septic or a mini wetland. It seems that you could make lye soap and use that without any sort of detriment to the ground (as it is simply processed ash water and animal fat). Buying gimicky expensive stuff seems less of a permie kind of idea, than buying REAL soap. You could just fill the washing machine with hot water and soap, put your clothes in to soak, and stop the washer for a couple of hours and then resume it, to agitate and spin dry your clothing. I suppose liquid soap would work fine in cold water, too.

In our drought (California) I've been using grey water in the garden. I mainly use ammonia for laundry, plus time (soaking). Ammonia used to be more commonly used as a laundry booster which allows one to reduce other cleaning agents, but it's fallen into disuse because too many people do not like the smell. But it leaves the laundry smelling sweet.. and ammonia is actually used as a plant fertilizer. (Do not use ammonia with bleach. Ever. A toxic gas is produced). I do not have toxic chemicals on my clothes that need washing, nor do I wash diapers.

The Solviva worm box system, that runs the toilet water through a tank of woodchips and compost worms, worked great. Anna Edey said that she intentionally used the most common popular cleaning products so that she could show that her system works even without much or any lifestyle change. It worked for her. You could try running your greywater through a compost worm and wood chip tank, and try all the products you want to. Most likely they'd all be fine, and in the odd case where they aren't, you'd have to replace the worms and eliminate that product. But it might never happen.

Compounds tend to break down and become harmless nutrients, but excess of certain elements like sodium can be a problem.

Thanks for bumping this thread up with comments, I've been wondering the same thing myself. We cloth diaper and my husband's a mechanic though, so that definitely complicates things - there are pretty strict washing standards for both.

I don't think I can use soap nuts with cloth diapers unfortunately, i think we may be stuck with the system we have, and maybe just use the nuts for regular laundry, which is maybe half of what I wash.

Baking soda. straight up. That's what they use in oil and gas country up in the North East of this province. I use it on my railway labor clothes to good effect.

Izzy Vale wrote:You cannot wash diapers and put the greywater in your garden for obvious reasons.

I note that several people here have mentioned washing cloth diapers. If one is washing diapers, then by definition you are no longer talking about greywater. You are talking about sewage, or blackwater if you prefer. There are threads here dedicated to composting humanure safely that one should explore, not to mention multiple conventional techniques for dealing with sewage that need no explanation. And for the love of all the gods, I sure hope you are washing them in separate loads from the rest of your laundry; not to sound squeamish, but the alternative is just unnecessarily gross! Not to mention that it would unnecessarily complicate one's attempts at recovering laundry water for greywater usage.

Izzy Vale wrote:Vinegars and Salt based cleaners (Borax, etc..) may be detrimental eventually to your ground...

Okay, we all know that too much sodium isn't compatible with healthy garden soil. But I thought that salt build up - "saltification"? is that a word? - was mainly a problem in very arid soils. Am I wrong? A little baking soda in the wash water represents precious little Na per acre when used to irrigate. Since salts are water soluble, and therefore wash through, I hadn't been under the impression that those of us who live in anything other than desert climates needed to worry about accumulation...?

And please explain in what way vinegar would harm garden soil. I was curious about that. What does it contain that might build up? Just acetic acid and water, right? Obviously we don't want to dump undiluted vinegar directly onto plants, but I hardly think we need to worry about wash water in a mulch basin or filtration pond burning anything.

Izzy Vale wrote:Soap (not detergent) is fine for plants... But grated soap (REAL soap not detergent) or liquid plant soap (Castile) should be absolutely safe for your ground... Buying gimicky expensive stuff seems less of a permie kind of idea, than buying REAL soap.

Amen to that! Not to disparage any of the brands of greywater-safe laundry products mentioned here - I'm sure they are fine products, and have no experiences with any to say otherwise - but frankly I wouldn't buy any of that expensive stuff if my life depended on it. Give me a gallon refill jug of Dr. Bronner's real soap, some baking soda, maybe some vinegar, and I'm sure I will figure out a routine that serves all of my washing and gardening needs for a lot less $.

BTW, I would also be very interested in hearing anyone's proven recipes for greywater-safe, preferably DIY, dishwashing detergent alternatives for use in automatic dishwashers. Is there already a thread for that?

Matthew Nistico wrote:

Ted Coakley wrote:I'm looking around online, trying to find out if anyone has concluded if laundry water that had OxiClean in it is okay for grey water to be added any or all of lawn, trees or food garden.
I see Sodium Percarbonate and Sodium Carbonate as 2 of the ingredients in it.

Anyone here know about OxiClean?

Thanks!
Ted

@Ted - I am very interested in your question and have been wondering the same myself. I am starting a new thread entitled "Oxygen bleach" here in the Grey Water forum to explore this topic in general (though if any permies moderators suggest that it fits better under another forum - "Homestead"? "Toxin-ectomy"? - we could move it). Below is a direct link to the new thread.

Permies > Grey Water > Oxygen Bleach

Thanks, Matthew - great thread you started over there. I'll stay tuned to it!

I appreciate you refreshing the link, Ted : )

Alison Thomas wrote:Ive been making my own for about 3 years now.  We'd like to put in a greywater collection system and I wondered if my recipe is compatible???  Washing soda, bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), pure castille soap, a few drops of essential oils (whatever takes my fancy when I'm 'brewing') and some water.  Thoughts?

I do the same as you, using my own castile soap. I've noticed no problems in the surrounding veg & berry plants.

Matthew Nistico wrote:...we all know that too much sodium isn't compatible with healthy garden soil.  But I thought that salt build up - "saltification"? is that a word? - was mainly a problem in very arid soils.  Am I wrong?  A little baking soda in the wash water represents precious little Na per acre when used to irrigate.  Since salts are water soluble, and therefore wash through, I hadn't been under the impression that those of us who live in anything other than desert climates needed to worry about accumulation...?

So after a couple of years stagnation I am hoping to reignite discussion on this thread, as it is a topic that I find very interesting  : )

In particular, I am still hoping to find an answer to my question, above: how much do we REALLY need to be concerned about using sodium products - baking soda, washing soda, etc. - in our laundry recipes or products if we plan to divert wash water into our greywater systems?

I wash a fair amount, but I will also divert my greywater into a small duck pond (so a significant dilution factor), and use the pond water for a little hydroponics and otherwise to irrigate about 1/3 an acre of food forest as needed.  My soils are clay based.  While they started out as pure subsoil clay, they're shaping up rapidly after about 7 years of permaculture management - the top soil is still thin in some places, but the property has demonstrated enormous capacity to permeate and hold water, which I take as a good sign (story: I cut into my water main 1.5 years ago while excavating, which gushed for about 1 hour.  1 hour after shutting off the flow, there was no standing water anywhere and you could walk across the area without sinking in).  Our summers are hot and sometimes dry, but overall I get almost 50" of rain per year.

Is salt accumulation based on laundry and dishwasher greywater alone a concern for my property?

Matthew Nistico wrote:

Izzy Vale wrote:Soap (not detergent) is fine for plants...  But grated soap (REAL soap not detergent) or liquid plant soap (Castile) should be absolutely safe for your ground...  Buying gimicky expensive stuff seems less of a permie kind of idea, than buying REAL soap.

Amen to that!  Not to disparage any of the brands of greywater-safe laundry products mentioned here - I'm sure they are fine products, and have no experiences with any to say otherwise - but frankly I wouldn't buy any of that expensive stuff if my life depended on it.  Give me a gallon refill jug of Dr. Bronner's real soap, some baking soda, maybe some vinegar, and I'm sure I will figure out a routine that serves all of my washing and gardening needs for a lot less $.

After reflecting on it for three years and doing a lot more research, I'd like to present a softened stance compared to my rather uncompromising original post.  While I maintain the same general sentiment, and am sure that DIY solutions are often cheaper and just as effective, that doesn't mean all of the commercial products are "gimicky," to use Izzy's word.

In particular, the original poster's choice of Oasis brand biocompatible laundry detergent seems to be the hands-down favorite of all the knowledgeable commentators and authors on the subject of greywater.  As of today, it is available on Amazon for about $30/gallon.  That really is not excessively expensive for most people's budgets.  A lot more $ than DIY recipes, but I could afford it.  And in order to sidestep the problems, or potential problems, associated with boron and sodium, etc., you might decide that it is well worth it.  Hell, I might yet decide that it is well worth it for myself!

BTW, that brings up an unrelated point: borax was mentioned in a post above as being a salt product.  While that is true, the sodium content is likely the least of the problems compared to the boron it contains.  While boron is perfectly safe for us, it reportedly can kill your plants in even small concentrations above those naturally occurring in the soil.

There is another, very similar thread on permies that I'd like to cross-link with this one.  Go check it out:

https://permies.com/t/113235/means-biodegradable

I think the reason we as in the various CA grey- water experts and municipalities have such a short list of acceptable products and no sodiums is that we get no rain at all for more than 1/2 a year, we get drought and water restrictions etc... So the grey water can be, and often is by design, the only water going to the plants that are lucky enough to get it.  This means that you can use these best practices and couple products for your grey water.  It does not mean that you might not be able to get away with or use other products, but this will require more thought, dilution, remediation, treatment, or you could end up harming your plants, or it could be fine as your situation could be different enough from a suburban or urban gardener in a drought

My grey water management in the Philippines will be dead simple. Houses are always placed uphill from the garden whenever possible, because of the risk of flooding, and in my case because I like to have some  wind.

The thirstiest and most nutrient hungry plants are bananas. Instead of being grown individually, they can be grown in great clumps. You run a gray water line to the center of the clump and allow it to stay there for as long as needed. I envision using PVC pipe with a flexible section, so that it can be easily moved to a new banana pit.

I lived at a rental house that puts the waste from 20 people into one spot. They use Tide and Downy and a bunch of other poisons. The only thing we will use is the soap that we manufacture from coconut oil, palm oil and lye. Oils are about $1 a litre when you buy it in quantity. Dirt cheap and quite effective. We used the same soap for laundry as for body washing, but it probably makes sense to use pure coconut oil for the laundry, since we don't need the bar hardness that palm oil imparts. I used some salt in my soap and I will use more of it in the future. The addition of salt is the least expensive way to increase production of coconuts and bananas in areas where it's deficient. The coral soil gets washed pretty clean during the rainy season, so it would take an amazing amount of this soap to give us too much salt.

Urine
I also intend to run a line from the urinal into the same grey water system, so that diluted urine can be part of the mix. Urine is currently delivered directly by those who produced it, to the grove outside of our rental house. There didn't seem to be any ill effect and the bananas were quite good. So for me, urine is greywater. During the rainy season, urine will not be part of the mix, because I don't want to waste the nutrients. So, instead it will go to the biodigester along with human and animal waste. We will have a holding tank of approximately 10,000 gallons for that, so that effluent can be held until the end of the rainy season, then applied as fertilizer. In environments that are warm all year, there is very little difference in cost between putting in a septic tank or a biodigester, so we will go for the cleaner option that also gives us a cooking gas.

I've been using a brand called "biokleen" for all my cleaning and laundry for years. They make several products, and I have liked most of them so far. It's made by a small family business in the PNW, and because they're a bit obscure, they aren't always included in lists of "safe" detergents. With very few exceptions, the HE detergent gets everything out of my laundry. Mother-In-Law's makeup on my new white washcloths being the one exception. Citric acid, boiling, and sunning the laundry usually gets the rest out. They also have a good enzyme cleaner that can help digest some of the nastier stains.

I am on a septic system (two tanks and two drain fields, because of old house quirks), but every time I drain my bathtub, I rue not having it diverted to the garden, so at some point, I'll cough up the cash for some plumbing improvements. I've sometimes hauled mine or the kids' bathwater out with a bucket to the plants that need water the most, because we get no rain for 3-4 months in the summer.

What someone said about cloth diapers is true, if you're essentially washing poop off your laundry, it's not "greywater", but I would hope a sane person has installed a diverter valve, that can be turned to send at least the pre-wash cycle water into the septic system, or into a separate treatment area (I occasionally see Swedes use a sewage treatment system that uses willows, which fascinates me, but I have to research it more) before the second wash can maybe go to the landscaping.

I have washed everything, including cloth diapers, in a bucket and plunger system when my washer died (not fun, but doable). The reason I don't actually mind handwashing of laundry (my system is set up to be hands-free until the laundry needs to be hung, because poopie diapers), is that I can guarantee the water temperature I put in is sufficient to clean my laundry, while the American washers don't really comfort me with their "warm" or "hot" cycles, as compared to the European style machines that give you the temperature in degrees, so if I want to wash my laundry at 90 Celsius to get the gunk out and kill most germs, it will. An American "hot" cycle might not exceed 50 Celsius, unless the washer has an internal heating element, or the water heater is cranked up by a lot... Handwashwater can go into the septic system, if it's dirty, but rinse water can absolutely go out to the trees again.

I love biokleen products as far as cleaning and they do not set off my allergies, etc... But, their laundry liquid is not greywater safe using strict standards, it may build up sodium in the soil if it is not diluted by other water sources.  It is gentle on septic systems  since there is many other water sources in there, I have used BioKleen various products but I am now switching back to Oasis ( which I used to use for years) as the plants at my laundry output died ( to be fair, it turned out my renter was using Borax which kills quicker, I have asked him to refrain)   Many people do get away with using such products, but this is not recommended. Ecos would be a better choice for grey water over Biokleen, as much as it pains me to say so.

But, here are the Biokleen free and clear laundry liquid ingredients:
Water
Laureth 7
Cocamidopropyl Betaine
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Lauramine Oxide
Sodium Chloride
Sodium Carboxmethyl Inulin
Citrus Grandis Seed Extract
C10-16 Alcohols

Debi Baker wrote:I love biokleen products as far as cleaning and they do not set off my allergies, etc... But, their laundry liquid is not greywater safe using strict standards, it may build up sodium in the soil if it is not diluted by other water sources.

Emphasis in the quote mine. Technically, I live in a temperate rainforest. My problem tends to be too much water everywhere, which is probably why it's not causing me any trouble. Yet. (wink)

This is slightly related. I was talking with some family members (one of which has cancer) about their detergents, as I was surprised to find mine weren't as non-toxic as I hoped they were. Come to find out, they'd switch from Ecos laundry soap to Tide Original because they'd seen a TV investigation that showed that Ecos didn't dissolve well in the water and was worse for septic systems, and Tide dissolved the best, and cleaned better. Being on septic, they then switched to Tide.

I'm a bit flummoxed here, and at a loss for how to persuade them to try a less toxic (Tide Original gets an F grade on the Environmental Working Group) detergent that's also better for the environment.

Probably a miss understanding ?

I just read something from Spruce website just now that said aerated septic systems they generally recommend powders vs liquid to keep down suds.  But of course the more natural detergents like Ecos do not have much suds, so less than most powders.  Not saying this is exactly what they heard,  but tjus example could lead people to that thought, get rid of my liquid Ecos and switch to powdered Tide.  You need to figure out what may have led them to it, maybe further internet research will help because you will need facts .  

Your state agancybor other source that they would consider legit may have published lists of recommended detergents and then you could convince them that this agency is right compared to a tv program sponsored by tide ?

Good luck

Debi Baker wrote:But, here are the Biokleen free and clear laundry liquid ingredients:
Water
Laureth 7
Cocamidopropyl Betaine
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Lauramine Oxide
Sodium Chloride
Sodium Carboxmethyl Inulin
Citrus Grandis Seed Extract
C10-16 Alcohols

Now I might be outing myself as a stereotypical blonde here (not unusual), but to those of us who actually didn't major in chemistry and get the sulfates and oxides mixed up, can you enlighten us on what the "bad" stuff was? Or perhaps give an idea of a reliable source to go poke around ourselves? It's pretty much word salad, and a lot of the "info" out there is scattered, and sometimes, especially on the cloth diaper laundry circuits on social media, outright wrong.

Penny Oakenleaf wrote:

Debi Baker wrote:But, here are the Biokleen free and clear laundry liquid ingredients:
Water
Laureth 7
Cocamidopropyl Betaine
Sodium Lauryl Sulfate
Lauramine Oxide
Sodium Chloride
Sodium Carboxmethyl Inulin
Citrus Grandis Seed Extract
C10-16 Alcohols

Now I might be outing myself as a stereotypical blonde here (not unusual), but to those of us who actually didn't major in chemistry and get the sulfates and oxides mixed up, can you enlighten us on what the "bad" stuff was? Or perhaps give an idea of a reliable source to go poke around ourselves? It's pretty much word salad, and a lot of the "info" out there is scattered, and sometimes, especially on the cloth diaper laundry circuits on social media, outright wrong.

Anything with the words "sodium" is a salt and salt is it good for your soil.