Dity dishes should not be taken lightly.
Note to Sue:
That plumber knew what the problem was. He soaked your pocketbook.
We never hear about it in time to stock up.
I got carded the other night buying Nyquil! DemocRATs suck.
Brand new silverware ruined with black marks that cannot be removed.
Called Cascade. They wanted me to return all the silverware and the offending container of Cascade. They sent a flimsy plastic bag to send the stuff back.
No address as to where to return the product and the ruined knives and forks.
They know that opened container of dishwasher detergent cannot be put into the US Mail.
No more Cascade in my house. Been using Sunlight with no problems at all.
I thought my dishwasher (new) was broken, and had the repairman come out (still under warranty). He never mentioned the actual problem. It took some research on the internet to find the real cause—and the cure. It’s a product called “Lemi-Shine” and despite its hoky name, my dishes look like they did when I used the phosphate type detergetn. Other solutions people suggested—eBay sometimes has the old detergent, and one lady says she gets it from Mexico—not sure I’d want to risk going into that war zone!
Also the article says it’s only a problem in 17 states—but companies like Cascade, etc. no longer make the phosphate product. It pretty much affects everyone.
Go to the hardware store, paint department, buy TSP Hard Surface Cleaner. Add one tablespoon to dishwasher along with your regular soap. It is what is missing from the new “green” detergents. Your dishes will look like you remembered.
We just replaced an old dishwasher with the same brand. The old one had a motor the size of a soccer ball. The new one is the size of a tennis ball. It doesn’t move much water. Sounds very wimpy when it runs. No wonder it is so quiet.
Lot of things come out dirty.
Beside the detergent, also blame it on “Energy Star!”
I told a lib neighbor of mine that Washington state banned a certain type of soap. She said no way.. When another neighbor told her it was true, the look on her face was priceless.
I’ve retaliated against the ecofreaks by going to paper plates, plastic utensils and Styrofoam cups.
Clean-up is a breeze.
They suck. My dishes don’t get clean anymore.
We’ve never had a dishwasher. Why trust a machine? Or a human one either. I do the dishes, and I’ve got those choices.
a bit of TSP would help with that...
We use Cascade and I knew something was up when our dishes started coming out cloudy and with white *dusty* streaks on everything. Black handles and black plastic looked terrible. I tried a couple of products but finally found Lemi Shine and this stuff is fabulous! Glasses come out crystal clear and look like new. Everything just shines. I buy it at Walmart. http://tinyurl.com/2bmgfgk
Look at this wikipedia line for trisodium phosphate:
“TSP was once the major component of laundry and dishwashing detergents. However, the phosphate contained in these products was not removed from wastewater during treatment and was then subsequently discharged into watersheds and larger bodies of water. “
Why don’t the eco-nazis, who have no problem telling automakers to “invent” cars that get great mpg or energy producers to “invent” cleaner production, don’t tell the gov’t to invent a water treatment system that removes the phosphates their worried about?
The the gov’t could sell those same phosphates back to the manufacturers that use them.
But no, much better to reduce the quality of life for everyday folks.
Everyone washing dishes by hand sends us back to the ‘50s. How much longer till we’re in the dark ages!
All this time, I thought it was because my children were leaving the dishes on the counter and not washing them. Silly me. We don’t have a working dishwasher.
A six figure study no doubt!
I got some of the skinny about this from a pool supply store.
Back in the 1960s, phosphates were banned from laundry soap, because though it is generally harmless to people, when it made it to streams and rivers as treated effluent, the phosphorus in it acted as fertilizer for algae.
However, automatic dishwashers were far less common back then, so there was no push to ban the use of phosphates for dishwasher detergent, especially because it cleaned dishes so effectively that it was thought to prevent a lot of food poisoning.
But today, because of so much phosphate in recycled effluent city water from dishwasher detergent, *and* because it is used as a sealant in PVC pipe, phosphate levels can be sky high.
And ironically, phosphate is added to water to help remove metallic lead.
And this mattered a lot to a pool supply store, as it means that pool owners have to use a lot more chlorine to kill algae in their phosphate rich pool water.
So, as in the 1960s, is it starting to cause a lot of algae growth in surface water? The big problem there is that more algae means less oxygen in the water for fish and other animals.
The bottom line is that, while phosphate detergent is good to clean dishes, over the long haul we need to find some good alternative to it, as it is one of those things that it is best to save for important, instead of day to day uses.
"We have used Cascade dishwashing powders for over 25 years in fact it is basically the only detergent we have ever used. Proctor and Gamble changed their tried and true formula to "phosphate free" and it is now USELESS and destructive to use!
The last two boxes we purchased are WORTHLESS and now CASCADE POWDER is the WORST PRODUCT WE HAVE EVER USED. It has RUINED SOME OF THE THINGS THAT WERE IN OUR DISHWASHER and coated ALL of our dishes, glasses, cups, silverware, aluminum cookware and non stick pans with a dingy, grimy white film! OUR DISHES NOW COME OUT DIRTIER THAN IF WE HAD NOT USED CASCADE AT ALL! In all of the years we have been using CASCADE we have NEVER had problems until now. My rinse aid is full. At first we thought our dishwasher was broken. I cannot continue to buy this product as it has ruined my dishes.
Proctor and Gamble's excuse for changing the formula was that they are required to be phosphate free by "state and local" laws. Be that as it may they should have created a product that WORKS before releasing it to the public!
They better hope those laws extend to New Hampshire, because I will be using a different brand going forward if I can find one that has phosphates in it here in New Hampshire. I may switch to another brand altogether because P&G has so alienated me on this.
I called to complain and P&G admitted that NOW their CASCADE powder DOES NOT WORK if you do not have perfect soft water! In order to clean my dishes I was told that I need to use their Cascade gell or their Cascade Complete! Consumers should not have to pay TWICE AS MUCH JUST TO GET CLEAN DISHES!
CASCADE DISHWASHING powder is supposed to CLEAN dishes, not make them dirty!
If Proctor and Gamble is no longer capable of creating a CASCADE POWDER product/formula that CLEANS dishes instead of making them dirty and destroys them then P&G should stop selling CASCADE dishWASHING products all together and get out of the market!
Come on P&G stop blaming the consumer and reformulate the product. FIX the PROBLEM OR STOP SELLING CASCADE dishDIRTYING powder to unsuspecting consumers."
One more thing: Given the thousands upon thousands of loyal CASCADE users who have had their dishes, flatware, glassware, cookware and numerous cooking and serving utensils DESTROYED AFTER USING THE terrible new CASCADE powder products I would not be surprised if a class action law suit isn't filed against P&G and everyone associated with the CASCADE dish, flatware, glassware, cookware DESTROYING garbage powder. As soon as it is announced we will be filing along with them!
P J had another great line in regards to this.
“Everybody wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help Mum with the dishes.”
— P.J. O’Rourke
I may be wrong here, but I thought there was a similar ban enacted for laundry detergent years and years ago. I think I remember seeing a detergent commercial back in the late 1970s where the product announced it was “phosphate free”.
As for whether dishwasher detergent/dish soap is really a significant factor in algae blooms...*shrug*. Algae blooms do occur, and some have been quite harmful. China has had more toxic blooms in the Beijing sea and inland water sources than you can shake a stick at. But in those cases, massive amounts of industrial and agricultural runoff appear to have been the source of the algae growth.