First of all, detergent pods are for dummies who cannot measure the right amount of detergent for a job and those who don’t know that water hardness is a factor. They are for convenience zombies who cannot be bothered to think. So from the very start, pods are not for solarpunks.

Someone told me they had a problem with their dishwasher because undisolved gelatin sacs were gumming up their drain. The linked article goes into clogs. This article (if you can get past the enshitification) says there is research on an environmental impact by pod sacks. So that’s also antithetical to solarpunkness.

So do it right. Fuck pods. They cost more anyway. Buy powdered detergent if you have soft water (or if your dishwasher has a built-in water softener) and use less (to avoid etching). If you have hard water, either use liquid detergent or just use a bigger dose of powder.

  • Jeena
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    81 day ago

    I agree. But it’s kind of hard to find where to buy the non-pod version nowadays.

    • Cris
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      12 hours ago

      In the us, Aldi carries store brand liquid, and last I heard Walmart has powdered in the store brand but that requires giving money to Walmart and they may have stopped selling it since

      Though in my experience the powder sometimes gets too much moisture in it and turns into a brick rendering it unusable anyway

      • @[email protected]OP
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        1 day ago

        In the past couple months Google has become quite hostile toward front-ends that previously made it possible for Tor users to reach their content. And I don’t have a good connection so I can’t do videos anyway.

        But indeed, it’s hard to find proper detergent. I have to go to a big store of a big grocery chain to get it. But it’s worth it on the basis of price alone. Buying a couple kilos of powder gives the most loads for the money. IIRC the pods were twice the cost of powder when comparing a promotional sales price on pods.

        (edit) Oh, but speaking of youtube, video rBO8neWw04 (which I have a saved a copy of) goes into pods. The guy makes an interesting point: pods discourage the use of detergent in the prewash. Though I think he over stresses that.

        • Jeena
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          320 hours ago

          The video I posted is the second version of the video you mention. He rerecorded it with some changes or so.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 day ago

          I hadn’t realized how lucky we were - we have one of those crunchy refill stores in town, where you can bring your own containers and buy various powders and liquids (primarily cleaning supplies though they do some seasonings as well. I wish I could buy orange juice that way (I basically gave up on drinking it because I didn’t need any more plastic bottles). We switched to various dilutions of castile soap for most things, and a generic dishwasher powder for our little countertop rig.

          • @[email protected]
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            219 hours ago

            Look for a supermarket with one of those juicing machines - you can just keep reusing the same bottle each time, the scan code doesn’t change

            • @[email protected]
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              216 hours ago

              That’s a good idea! I do that with peanut butter at a fancy grocery store - I wonder if there’s one around that does juice

      • Jeena
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        120 hours ago

        In South Korea, but I assume I powder is difficult to get nowadays everywhere.

        • @[email protected]
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          16 hours ago

          Well, I’ve never had problems finding it in Finland and still don’t. Generalising assumptions are going to be wrong.