What feeds the algae starves the river. The frog breathes through her skin, so the water is her air.
What to avoid, and how it hides on a label
Phosphorus is fertilizer. Down a drain it feeds algae faster than a river can breathe; the bloom dies, rots, and takes the oxygen with it.
They do not clean anything. They make white look whiter under light, and they are slow to break down once they leave the machine.
What to prefer
The one word that matters, and it is a claim a label can be held to.
Less that has to be broken down downstream, and less on your skin.
Half the swap is how much you use, not which bottle. Cold and full is already an action on the shelf.
The pick, honestly
Brands change their recipes; the word on the front is the thing to trust. Check dishwasher tablets especially: in much of the world laundry powder went phosphate-free by law, tablets did not always follow.
No brand is named here yet. When one is, it will carry the date a person checked it, and it will never move the pick: there is no ranking to move.
If that is too much today
Most machines are over-dosed. Halving it is a swap that costs nothing and is already most of the way there.
The chain
drain → river → algae bloom → oxygen falls → fish and frogs
Where this comes from
- Regulation (EU) No 259/2012 on phosphates in consumer laundry and dishwasher detergents - European Parliament and Council. limits phosphorus to 0.5 g per laundry wash (2013) and 0.3 g per dishwasher wash (2017) because of eutrophication.
- Environment Committee calls for laundry and dishwasher detergent phosphate ban - European Parliament. phosphates released into water cause algae to grow at the expense of other aquatic life.
Checked 2026-09-18 by Hopeling, human review. Things change; the date is the honesty. Machine-readable copy of every card: /swaps.json.
Decide it once in the app, and it runs every time you shop. Open the app