Does Tide’s new Bio-Based Detergent, purclean, have the chops?
Tide have a new green detergent! While I usually make my green, homemade detergent, I admit 
doesn’t have the cleaning power of modern soaps. Adverse to the utilization of elbow grease, I am partial to cleaning products that suggest their powerful chemical compositions will reduce the need for waxing on and waxing off. I’m happy to never be a ninja if it means I can simply spray something on the dirt and then get back under the duvet. But I’ve never been able to risk the health of the environment and my family for convenience. Now, apparently, I don’t have to!
I was a little sceptical at first; there’s a lot of ‘greenwashing’ where corporations pass off products as earth-friendly to lure in unsuspecting eco-conscious consumers. So here is what my investigations found:
- Tide purclean was designed to clean as well as regular Tide in energy-saving normal/cold water. A whopping 90% of the energy used in a wash is to heat the water.
- Puclean is 65% bio-based which means it contains ingredients that are made from plant, marine or forestry sources that are renewable. It does contain several ingredients that are not plant-based including ethoxylated polythyleneimin, amphiphilic alkoxylated polymer and pentetic acid.
- Tide purclean is made with 100% renewable wind power electricity at a zero manufacturing waste to landfill site. The renewable wind power electricity comes from a wind farm located in Texas, and provides new renewable generation that is pooled into the power grid with other energy.
- No dyes, chlorine, phosphates, ethanolamine and optical brighteners.
- The bottle is made from 25% post-consumer recycled content and is 100% recyclable.
- Since 2010,Tide has reduced waste by 50% and water by 17% per unit of production in the manufacturing process and eliminated 3 million truck miles per year by consolidating distribution centers.
So now the question remains; does it provide the same effective cleaning action as other Tide products?
To put it to the test I decided to collect everything I spilled on myself over a week and see if this new Tide purclean is able to handle the challenge.
I’ve duplicated the spills on two napkins. Starting at the top was beet juice (fall canning is cool!), 
then chocolate cake, then green icing sugar (so I eat a lot of cake…), egg and then red wine (no surprises there).
I washed the first napkin in regular Tide and the second one in Tide purclean and both napkins came out perfectly! I then got sort of addicted to these tests and also did one with grass stains and dirt and another with mango juice. None of the stains were there when the wash was done. At this stage, my husband said I was getting weird, so we stopped with the stain tests.
The package describes it as a ‘floral melange of lavender, jasmine and orange flower thickened with amber woods’ which sounds as good as it smells.