Tropical Traditions Powdered Dishwasher Detergent: #Review and #Giveaway (Closed)

It's been a couple months since my last Tropical Traditions review/giveaway, so we're definitely overdue for another one! ;)

The first two TT products I reviewed were food-related, so for this next feature I decided to try a product from their Household Traditions line of non-toxic cleaning products. As you've probably noticed from previous M2M blog posts and reviews, my husband and I are working toward running a chemical-free and eco-friendly household - especially important now that we have a little one who eats things off the floor and all that good stuff! As such, I'm continuously on the lookout for products which won't put our family's health in jeopardy, and are kind to our planet to boot!

The product I chose to review was their Powdered Dishwasher Detergent with Enzymes.

I was eager to try this detergent for a few reasons:

1. It is free of chlorine and phosphates. The former poses numerous health risks and the latter can have harmful effects on water systems, so both are bad news. (I did some online research here and encourage you to do the same if, like me, you're interested in the hows and whys.)
2. It is a powdered detergent that you measure yourself. We'd previously been using those dishwasher gel packs which are convenient & all, but likely wasteful for those households with "favourable" water conditions that require less detergent. In our case, we have a water softener and have also started using a magnet ball, so we should be able to get away with 1/4 to 1/2 the amount of detergent as recommended on the package. Doing some quick math here - at 1/4 cup per load, we can run the dishwasher 160 times using a single jar of this detergent. That's some serious bang for the buck!
3. People have had great things to say about this product! I've checked out several blog reviews and other comments, and the general consensus is that it works wonderfully.

So all that is great in theory, but did the product meet our expectations in practice? The answer is a resounding YES! We have now run our dishwasher 5 times using our Household Traditions powdered dish detergent, and our dishes are definitely coming out as clean (if not more so) as they did with the previous product we were using. The first four times we used a full scoop as directed, and the fifth time we used half a scoop (as we were using our magnet ball at that point) and we weren't disappointed any of these times. Next time we will try a quarter scoop and I'm confident things will still be hunky dory; if not, I'll add a li'l footnote to the review in the interest of full disclosure! :)

We did conduct somewhat of a "stress test" by sneaking a few particularly crusty plates into one of the loads. Our detergent did an admirable job here, as there was just a small amount of food residue remaining on one of the plates when the cycle finished. In reality, we always rinse and/or soak the major gunk off everything that goes in our dishwasher, so we should never have to contend with this scenario anyway.

Let's see....what else?

Initially, I was a bit concerned that the detergent might clump, but we haven't noticed this yet - so that's another good thing.

Some reviewers have mentioned the lack of chlorine smell when running the dishwasher with Household Traditions detergent. We always run our dishwasher in the middle of the night (to take advantage of Ontario's new time-of-use pricing model and to minimize disruption) so I can't comment on this myself, however the fact that chlorine-based detergents evidently emit this smell is disconcerting, as this certainly can't be very healthy to breathe in! As such, I'm thankful that our HT detergent doesn't contain this harsh stuff!

Finally, we like that the detergent is contained in a fully-recyclable jar. Always a good thing. *thumbs up*

All in all, we really like our Household Traditions powdered dish detergent so far! We feel good that we're using a safe and eco-friendly product, it's performing very well, we're getting a lot of mileage out this single jar (so it's very cost-effective), and we're quite confident it will continue to work well for us into the future (given the product's incorporation of an enzyme package and hard water treatment additives, its lack of clumping, and our own strides toward promoting "friendly" water conditions). Two thumbs way up!

Buy It:

You can purchase Household Traditions Powdered Dishwasher Detergent (and other great products) directly from the Household Traditions website. They often have terrific promos & discounts going which you can keep track of by signing up for the Tropical Traditions newsletter. 

Win It:

Tropical Traditions has generously offered to give away a 5 lb jar of Powdered Dish Detergent to one lucky Manager to Mom reader!

To enter, please fill out the Rafflecopter form below. Comments do not count as entries, however feel free to add a comment to remind yourself that you entered!

Disclosure:  Tropical Traditions provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose.  Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product. I received no financial compensation for writing my review or offering this giveaway.  This is my completely honest opinion above and may be different from yours