5 Non-Toxic Dishwasher Detergents & Tablets

We scrubbed through several criteria to suss the best sparkly, sustainable, natural dishwasher detergents: non-toxic ingredients, cruelty-free and vegan, palm oil-free (or at a minimum sustainably sourced palm oil), ethical sourcing, and lower impact packaging.

We’ve also added our own DIY dishwasher powder recipe at the bottom of the article if you’d like to have a go at full control over your cleaning 🙂

Note: Our brand rating system assesses brands based on multiple sustainability-related criteria, including things like product safety, chemical use and biodiversity impact. Brands need to opt in to be rated. Look out for rated detergent brands below and find others in our directory.

Making your own cleaning products is often cheap, easy and hygienic. So if homemade is your preference for cleaning dishes, we’ve written up an easy guide on DIY dishwasher detergent recipes for you to try.

For the TL:DR, here’s a simple homemade solution you can also use.

• 1 cup sodium carbonate (AKA washing soda): Made from salt and limestone, it cuts grease.
• 1 cup Borax (AKA sodium tetraborate): A naturally occurring powdery white mineral that has a number of uses like getting rid of stains, mold, or mildew.
• ½ cup food grade citric acid: Unsweetened lemonade packets will do!
• ½ cup salt: Helps to scrub!

Mix it all together and store in a mason jar. Use one tablespoon per load.

How about vinegar? Can vinegar replace dishwasher detergent?

Not alone, but it does make for an excellent natural rinse aid.

Add white vinegar to the rinse dispenser for the very best results. The vinegar breaks down any final grit or grime, combats hard water, and keeps dishes stain free.

Did you know that in the United States, cleaning manufacturers aren’t legally bound to disclose their full product formula?

It’s a massive issue given that many of our home cleaning products, including dishwasher detergent, enter our waterways, where they destroy aquatic ecosystems.

Most conventional dishwasher detergents contain harsh bleaching agents, grease-breaking enzymes, and surfactants that are highly toxic.

Dishwasher pods also contain artificial preservatives, dyes, fragrances, binding agents, solvents, and corrosive inhibitors. Some also have low levels of nitrogen and phosphorus, which are harmful to the planet and toxic to human health.

For example according to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), Cascade gets an F on EWG’s Hazard Score.

Here is a list of common dishwasher detergent ingredients to avoid:

• Phosphates: These enter the water system where they cause mineral poisoning, which kills aquatic plants and animals.
• Polyacrylates: On humans, they cause severe burns and eye damage. To aquatic animals, they’re toxic.
• Benzisothiazolinone: An environmental pollutant to aquatic life and a chemical that causes painful lung, skin, and eye irritation—even acute or chronic bronchitis—in humans.
• Methylisothiazolinone: This is linked to allergic reactions, inhalation toxicity, allergic and possibly neurotoxicity.
• Artificial Fragrances: Artificial fragrances in dishwasher detergent and regular dish soap have hundreds of undisclosed chemicals, which cause allergic reactions, chemical sensitivities, rashes, and are likely toxic to the environment.
• Dyes: They do nothing but help sell the product. Can cause rashes and allergies, plus many dyes are proven endocrine disruptors and carcinogens.
• Bleach: AKA sodium hypochlorite, which is corrosive to human eyes and skin, plus can cause gastric burns, throat irritation, and fluid in the lungs.
• Surfactants: These usually come from palm oil, petroleum, or even animals in conventional dishwasher detergent.

A Note on PVOH/PVA:

The water-soluble film that many detergent pods come in (including a few on this list), which is made of polyvinyl alcohol, AKA PVOH (also called PVA), is also a problem because it’s technically plastic that never fully biodegrades unless in very specific conditions—which most water treatment plants do not meet.

According to some studies, 75% of PVOH goes untreated in water systems in the US from detergent pods alone.

The Plastic Oceans project concludes that pods add further to plastic pollution. And this detrimental impact increases monumentally when you consider that over 8000 tons of PVA products are released yearly into the environment.

Risks of PVOH / PVA include:

• Destroyed plant life cycle
• Imbalanced oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere
• Accumulation in landfills if it doesn’t pass through water treatment plants
• Water pollutants that negatively affects aquatic life

While PVA does have its advocates and it’s a step up from the many traditional formulas, the jury is really still out. Check out our PVA deep dive for more dirt on the dissolvable plastic.

However, right now, it’s largely what we have to work with, but we hope to see the best dishwasher detergents sans PVA in the future.

What are eco dishwasher tablets? And how did we decide what is the best alternative to dishwasher tablets?

We considered the following in helping us scrub through the dirt to get to those sustainable and sparkly brands:

• Non-toxic: Standard dishwasher detergent often contains phosphates and other harsh chemicals that filter into waterways and harm aquatic life. We looked for non-toxic dishwasher detergent brands that prioritize plant-based and ideally organic dishwasher tablets that will safely biodegrade.
• Vegan and cruelty-free: Products need to be 100% cruelty-free, and there’s just no need for detergent to contain ingredients derived from animals.
• Palm oil free: We ideally want sustainable dishwasher pods to be palm oil-free. If brands do use palm oil it needs to be sustainably sourced (RSPO certified).
• Ethical ingredient sourcing
• Thoughtful packaging: Zero waste (i.e. compostable or reusable) packaging is best. At a minimum packaging should be recyclable and ideally made of recycled materials.

A note on Polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH, PVA)

In the very best world of eco dishwasher tablets, no plastic would be necessary, but many brands use a dissolvable membrane made out of Polyvinyl alcohol.

Polyvinyl alcohol is a type of water-soluble plastic polymer used in various products including laundry detergent sheets and pods, and eco-friendly dishwasher pods and sheets

Because there’s been controversy surrounding the eco friendliness of PVA we did a deep dive on the question: is PVA sustainable?

Whilst PVA can fully biodegrade, it needs specific conditions to do so and these aren’t always met by wastewater treatments. If it’s not broken down, PVA can contaminate waterways as another form of plastic pollution.

One study found that as much as 75% of PVA from laundry and dishwasher pods isn’t broken down during the water treatment process.

However, critics of the study say that it’s based on flawed modeling and that biodegradability in the wild is very different from biodegradability in a lab-controlled setting.

For that reason, it’s more accurate to call it dissolvable than biodegradable.

PVA still has its advocates, including the brands that promote it.

Not to be swayed by greenwashing, it’s clear that we need more independent studies to be carried out.

We can either treat PVA as an effective way to cut down on larger amounts of plastic until better alternatives are available or opt for less convenient non-PVA options.

If PVA leaves a bad film in your mouth as it might on the planet, you could use a zero waste dish soap in the form of eco-friendly dishwasher soap powders or—if you ditch the dishwasher altogether—soap bars.

What’s scarier than a mountain of dishes next to your sink?

The far-reaching impact of the products we use to clean our dishes can have.

The bottom line is, what goes down the plughole (or out the back of the dishwasher) ends up in our waterways and the environment affecting wildlife and the food chain—you included.

It’s time we pull the plug on toxic ingredients and single-use plastic and toxic chemicals.

By choosing to make our automatic dishwasher tablets natural and (mostly) plastic-free, we get a sustainable sparkle, instead of dirty dishwater.

Little changes—even one as little as hitting “share”—make a big impact, so please pass this article along to help us all clean up those daily chores.