No detergent = Not only clean clothes

A package arrived last night containing an order J and I made over the weekend. Inside was... well, how to describe it... Maybe it's best to provide a pictureIt's called the "Eco Saturn" and will clean your dirty laundry without soap or detergent. I had recently read about a similar product in Leo Hickman's book about Ethical Living ("A Life Stripped Bare") and wanted to see for myself how this worked. According to reports, and the image posted above, this will save money in water, electricity and detergent amounting to 15,708 yen a year, which is roughly $140. This little ball of joy only cost about $35, so I figured what's the cost in trying it.
There's no doubt the thing is pretty funny looking, but apparently it contains 7 different kinds of little ceramic balls inside that do the trick, such as anti-corrosive/anti-fungal, alkali, minus-ion, and infra-red substances. Yeah, it all makes about as much sense as the ingredients on a shampoo bottle at this point, but I'm hoping the little space ball will prove to be as good as it promises. Instead of using laundry detergent, we'll just throw in the eco-saturn and run the machine. It has an additional effect of keeping steel laundry machine drums from corroding as well. Stay tuned as we will be doing laundry this weekend and try to clean our clothes and the environment at the same time.
And if you really want to consider Eco-geekdom, consider that in Japan most laundry is only done with cold water (saves a lot of electricity), or we often use a bath pump that takes the hot water from the bath tub (relatively clean water as you wash outside the tub and only soak in the water). The rinse cycle is done with clean cold water from the tap, so it's all a very sanitary process if combining bath and laundry seems strange to anyone. Also, baths use significantly less water than showers do (unless you are in and out in under 3 minutes, but then why not just run through a sprinkler real quick) since the water is not left running for periods without really being used. Sadly, most homes in the US are not set up for this, although I have heard of people jerry-rigging a similar set-up. One blogger even boasted of pumping used bath water to his toilet tank, which is some kind of cross between nature lover and DIY enthusiast. Stories like that make you wonder what aliens in outer space might be doing, say, on Saturn.
;)