Petroleum-based chemicals in cleaners

Something I learned recently: most detergents contain ingredients based on petroleum. This includes most laundry detergent, dishwashing detergent, and fabric softener. Of course, the companies aren't required to list ingredients, so it's not like you'd notice easily. The other ingredients are also toxic and not bio-degradable. More info here.

So, here's the breakdown of alternatives:

Laundry detergent: There are non-petroleum brands out there. We use Seventh Generation, and I've found it to be pretty good. I haven't noticed any difference at least. Giant Eagle also carries it, so it's easy to get. Watch out though. Tide is marketing something called "Pure Essentials" that is still petroleum based. It sits next to Seventh Gen on the shelf. Clever marketing by Tide....

Fabric softener: From what I can tell, there are no alternatives here. Both sheets and liquid are made from petroleum. We just stopped using it entirely when the last bottle ran out. Honestly, I don't notice any major difference.

Dishwashing detergent: There are non-petroleum options. We tried them. Unfortunately, if you have really hard water, they don't work so well. They somehow left the dishes dirty. Apparently they work best with soft water. They probably would also work better if you pre-rinse, but we don't. So, we went back to the old stuff for now. I'm not totally happy about it, but one step at a time I suppose.