Grab Green has been making waves with its wide range of eco-friendly, naturally-derived, yet extremely effective cleaning products. We put their baby laundry detergent pods and dryer sheets to the test to see how they performed. Check out what we found!
Grab Green has been making waves with its wide range of eco-friendly, naturally-derived, yet extremely effective cleaning products.
We put their baby laundry detergent pods and dryer sheets to the test to see how they performed!
We tested three versions of the Grab Green baby laundry detergent pods: newborn baby in chamomile and fragrance-free, and baby (5+ months) in dreamy rosewood scent.
We also tested the corresponding Grab Green baby dryer sheets, in newborn baby chamomile, and baby (5+ months) dreamy rosewood scent.
As of this writing, the laundry detergent pods sell for about 26 cents each, and the dryer sheets for about 12 cents each.
The best prices we could find (including subscription-based discounts) were directly through the Grab Green website.
- Table of Contents [show/hide]
- Grab Green Baby Overall Ratings
- Take-Home Message
- About Grab Green
- Baby Laundry Pods
- Ingredients
- Fragrance
- Effectiveness
- Conclusions
- Baby Dryer Sheets
- Ingredients
- Fragrance
- Effectiveness
- Conclusions
- Where to Buy Grab Green
Full disclosure: Grab Green was generous enough to provide us with free samples of their baby laundry detergent pods and dryer sheets for testing (thank you!).
Grab Green Baby Laundry Products: Overall Ratings
Based on our hands-on reviews, we give the Laundry Pods and Dryer Sheets the following overall ratings:
Baby Laundry Detergent Pods
Baby Dryer Sheets
This makes them lucky enough to show up on our list of the best baby laundry detergents!
Overall Conclusions: Grab Green Baby Laundry Products
Most parents don't have time to read through this entire article, so here is a summary of what we found.
We were excited to get our hands on these Grab Green baby products, and were pleasantly surprised by the following:
✔️ Surprisingly safe & non-toxic.
✔️ Easy to use and responsible packaging.
✔️ Ecologically responsible formulations.
✔️ Naturally-derived ingredients.
✔️ Fragrance-free option for sensitive skin.
✔️ Appealing fragrance options.
✔️ Great EWG grades.
✔️ Excellent cleaning effectiveness.
✔️ Super soft and static-free clothes.
✔️ Reasonably priced.
However, like with any review we write, we also had some little gripes worth mentioning:
❌ Fragrances can be overwhelming.
❌ Detergent pods were slightly leaky.
Overall, we think Grab Green has done an impressive job developing eco-friendly, non-toxic baby laundry products that not only make you feel good, they work extremely well. The price is reasonable, and we love how soft our baby clothes felt after being washed and dried with the Grab Green products!
We were impressed with the ingredients, ease of use, and overall cleaning (pods) and anti-static (dryer sheets) power.
Just a few cons worth mentioning. First, the fragrances can be somewhat overwhelming, especially if you're used to laundry products that use relatively subtle scents. Also, the dryer sheets are not available in a fragrance-free version, so you're stuck with one of the two fragrances (chamomile or dreamy rosewood).
Second, the pods hold powder detergent and they can be a little leaky, causing powdery little crumbs to be on the inside of the bag and outside of each pod. Not a huge deal, but worth mentioning!
About Grab Green
Grab Green was founded over 10 years ago by parents who were seeking more eco-friendly and non-toxic alternatives to household cleaning products, without compromising effectiveness.
Since then, Grab Green has been innovating their way to the top of a growing market. They were the first company to develop and sell laundry detergent pods, non-toxic degreasers, Velcro pouch closures, and more!
All of Grab Green's products are designed for convenience and minimal waste, and they use responsible packaging, cruelty-free testing methods, naturally-derived ingredients that are non-toxic, and maintain very high cleaning effectiveness and leave zero residue behind.
While many companies making these claims have been accused of Greenwashing, Grab Green is very transparent about their ingredients and manufacturing practices.
Note that there is definitely a trade-off between producing truly eco-friendly, non-toxic, and sensitive products versus creating products with highly effective cleaning.
If you expect your cleaning products to be extremely effective, you need to tolerate some ingredients that are less than ideal. More on that later!
Grab Green Baby Laundry Detergent Pods Review
We were excited to give these new laundry pods a shot!
Below we describe our opinions about the ingredients, then the fragrances, and finally the effectiveness (with a stain-fighting test!) of the Grab Green newborn and baby laundry detergent pods.
Ingredients
We tested three versions of the detergent pods: newborn chamomile, newborn fragrance-free, and baby (5+ months) dreamy rosewood.
To judge the ingredients list, we consulted with the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) guide to healthy cleaning, which rates each ingredient on a scale from A (best) to F.
While not everyone agrees with EWG's recommendations, they are still the best resource we've found for comprehensive ratings of how ingredients rate for skin allergies & irritation, developmental & reproductive toxicity, cancer risk, and environmental impact.
Here is the full ingredients list for the newborn laundry detergent pods, in fragrance-free version:
Here is the list of ingredients in the fragrance-free newborn detergent pods, with the EWG grade next to each ingredient. Note that the overall EWG rating for this fragrance-free detergent is likely an A (judging by other products with similar ingredients lists), though it hasn't been published yet.
Ingredients in Grab Green Fragrance-Free Newborn Laundry Detergent Pods: Sodium carbonate (A), sodium sesquicarbonate (A), sodium bicarbonate (A), sodium carbonate peroxide (A), sodium citrate (A), citric acid (A), c9-11-pareth-6 (C), sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (C), subtilisin enzyme blend (B), amylase enzyme blend (B), lipase enzyme blend (B), and polyvinyl alcohol (C).
We were pretty impressed with this ingredients list. Sensitive, non-toxic, and environmentally-responsible laundry detergents are extremely difficult to make, unless you're willing to compromise cleaning effectiveness. I think you'll be impressed with the cleaning effectiveness, which we cover later in this article!
Here is the full ingredients list for the newborn laundry detergent pods, in chamomile scent:
The EWG rates the Chamomile scent of the Grab Green Newborn laundry detergent pods with a B. Note quite as good as how we think the fragrance-free version will score, but pretty compelling.
The primary concern is the fragrance. While Grab Green does use mostly naturally-sourced fragrance ingredients (see the list, above), they can still be skin irritants and allergens, especially the citronella oil.
Ingredients in Grab Green Chamomile Newborn Laundry Detergent Pods: Sodium carbonate (A), sodium sesquicarbonate (A), sodium bicarbonate (A), sodium carbonate peroxide (A), sodium citrate (A), citric acid (A), c9-11-pareth-6 (C), sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (C), fragrance (D), subtilisin enzyme blend (B), amylase enzyme blend (B), lipase enzyme blend (B), and polyvinyl alcohol (C).
Here is the full ingredients list for the baby (5+ months) laundry detergent pods, in dreamy rosewood scent:
The EWG rates the Dreamy Rosewood scent of the Grab Green baby laundry detergent pods with a B, but similar to the chamomile newborn version.
Again, the primary concern is the fragrance. While Grab Green does use naturally-sourced fragrance ingredients (see the list, above), they can still be skin irritants and allergens.
Ingredients in Grab Green Dreamy Rosewood Baby Laundry Detergent Pods: Sodium carbonate (A), sodium carbonate peroxide (A), sodium sesquicarbonate (A), sodium bicarbonate (A), sodium citrate (A), c9-11-pareth-6 (C), sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate (C), citric acid (A), fragrance (D), subtilisin enzyme blend (B), amylase enzyme blend (B), and polyvinyl alcohol (C).
Overall, in comparison to most other "sensitive" and "free and clear" laundry detergents we've tested, which actually tend to have some extremely harsh ingredients, Grab Green has done a really nice job.
Given that strong fragrances can be a concern for skin irritation and allergies, we strongly suggest choosing the fragrance-free version, especially if your little one has sensitive skin.
Scents and Fragrances
This is nearly impossible to describe without smelling it first-hand, but here are a few things that might help.
When we received the shipment of detergents to test, Grab Green put the Dreamy Rosewood and Chamomile detergents and dryer sheets into one big cardboard box.
We collect our mail at our local UPS Store, who called and asked us to quickly pick up the package because it was "stinking up their entire store" - not a good start! They said it wasn't necessarily a bad smell, but they were getting a little sick of it.
When we got it home, we had it sitting in our laundry room for about a week before we started testing it. Within a few hours our entire basement started to smell like chamomile and dreamy rosewood.
While the odors themselves are pleasant enough (especially the chamomile, in our opinion), we thought they were simply too powerful.
One of the big challenges is that Grab Green uses polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to form the plastic pod cover. PVA is porous and highly permeable. This is great for helping it quickly dissolve in water, but it also allows all the fragrances to permeate the pod liner.
The other little issue is that Grab Green puts a little pinhole in each detergent pod bag so prospective consumers can pick up the bag and smell the fragrance in the store. You can see these little pinholes (sniff-holes?) in the below photo:
Together, this makes for a very fragrant experience for anyone who goes near these pods!
Given that the fragrance is the harshest ingredient included in the chamomile and dreamy rosewood laundry pods, Grab Green might consider reducing the fragrance levels for at least two reasons: lowering the potential irritating aspect of these pods, and lowering the odor to a more reasonable level.
Of course, it's important to point out that scent and fragrance are a personal preference. We tend to be more sensitive to it because our detergents are all fragrance-free, but some parents might not think these formulations are powerful at all!
Cleaning Effectiveness
The Grab Green detergent pods contain several ingredients that should make them very effective at cleaning. These include:
- Sodium carbonate: This is a basic washing soda that can help remote fats and grease.
- Sodium carbonate peroxide: This is sodium carbonate with hydrogen peroxide, which helps remote odors and stains.
- Sodium sesquicarbonate: This is a phosphate-free cleaning product that can also help soften water.
- Sodium bicarbonate: This is baking soda, which can be very helpful (and safe!) for removing stains.
- c9-11 pareth-6: This is basically a synthetic alcohol that is used for cleaning.
- Sodium dedecylbenzenesulfonate: This gets used a lot with c9-11 pareth-6 as an anionic surfactant to help cleaning.
- Subtilisin enzyme blend: Enzymes act as little scrubbers, and these enzymes remove protein-based stains.
- Amylase enzyme blend: Enzymes act as little scrubbers, and these enzymes remove starch-based stains.
Looking through these ingredients, Grab Green has included a mechanism for removing basically every type of stain: fat-based, protein-based, and starch-based.
We tested the effectiveness of this detergent in hot water, against three stain types, with baby feeding in mind: mashed avocado, a mustard-chocolate mixture (to emulate #2!), and formula-based milk.
Here are the three stains on a white Gerber onesie. Obviously the milk doesn't show up well (far right), but due to the high fat content it tends to leave a dark stain after it dries:
We pre-treated the stains with cold water and baking soda, using a toothbrush to get as much off as possible. This is what we typically do with stains, so we thought it was appropriate here as well.
Here is what it looked like after pre-treating:
At this point, we started to think we may have gone a little over the top with the mustard! If the Grab Green can effectively get rid of these stains, we'll be super impressed!
To wash, we put the stained onesie through a small load with other baby clothes, on a normal cotton cycle with hot water in our LG high effiency (HE) washing machine.
Because we use a front-loading washing machine, we threw the pod into the back of the drum before adding the clothes, as indicated by the instructions on the back of the bag of pods.
After washing, we tumble dried the clothes with one of the Grab Green dryer sheets (more on those below).
Here's what we found when the clothes were done washing:
The Grab Green detergent pods did an excellent job! We drew a red circle around the area where we could detect the faintest hint of mustard, but only when held up to the light.
The detergent pod worked impressively hard to remove some of the most challenging stains that we could throw at them, leaving only a faintest trace of the worst culprit of all (mustard!).
The chocolate was gone, as were the avocado and milk stains. Color us impressed!
Conclusions
Overall, we were really impressed with the Grab Green laundry detergent pods, especially the fragrance-free newborn version.
For a laundry detergent to be rated as a B or higher by the EWG is an amazing feat, and typically that comes along with sub-standard cleaning effectiveness.
But the Grab Green surprised us with its highly effective cleaning against some of the worst stains we could imagine, while keeping the clothes soft and smelling fresh.
We think the Grab Green Laundry Detergent Pods for babies are the perfect addition for any family interested in a gentle, sensitive laundry detergent that is eco-friendly, non-toxic, and highly effective. And who wouldn't want that!?
Now, our review of the Grab Green dryer sheets!
Grab Green Baby Dryer Sheets Review
Below we describe our opinions about the ingredients, then the fragrances, and finally the effectiveness of the Grab Green newborn and baby dryer sheets.
Ingredients
We tested two versions of the dryer sheets: newborn chamomile, and baby (5+ months) dreamy rosewood.
To judge the ingredients list, we consulted with the Environmental Working Group's (EWG) guide to healthy cleaning, which rates each ingredient on a scale from A (best) to F.
While not everyone agrees with EWG's recommendations, they are still the best resource we've found for comprehensive ratings of how ingredients rate for skin allergies & irritation, developmental & reproductive toxicity, cancer risk, and environmental impact.
Here is the full ingredients list for the Grab Green newborn chamomile dryer sheets:
Here is a list of ingredients with EWG ratings next to each ingredient (in parentheses):
Ingredients in Grab Green Newborn Dryer Sheets (Chamomile): Fatty acid (B), di-(palmcaboxyethyl) hydroxyethyl methylammonium methyl sulfates (D), fragrance (D).
While the EWG does not appear to provide a score for these specific dryer sheets, we suspect it would be a C, given the similar ingredients in the Grab Green Stoneworks Dryer Sheets (Rose Petal), which also score a C on the EWG website.
Here is the full ingredients list for the Grab Green baby dreamy rosewood dryer sheets:
Here is a list of ingredients with EWG ratings next to each ingredient (in parentheses):
Ingredients in Grab Green Baby Dryer Sheets (Dreamy Rosewood): Fatty acid (B), di-(palmcaboxyethyl) hydroxyethyl methylammonium methyl sulfates (D), fragrance (D).
Given these are the same exact ingredients as in the chamomile version (other than some swapped fragrance oils), we suspect it would score a C, given the similar ingredients in the Grab Green Stoneworks Dryer Sheets (Rose Petal), which also score a C on the EWG website.
Not terrible, but also could be better. The ingredients they list can cause some respiratory effects (asthma, allergies) and skin irritation in little ones who are more sensitive.
Fragrance
Both the newborn and baby (5+ months) versions have a moderate-intensity fragrance.
The chamomile has a classic "baby" smell, similar the fragrance used on most diapers. The dreamy rosewood is even more pleasant.
The fragrance isn't anywhere near as strong as it is with the detergent pods, and clothes do not come out overwhelmingly smelling like the dryer sheets, which is nice.
Effectiveness
As expected, clothes came out of the dryer a little softer than usual, smelling a little fresher, and with slightly less static.
There's not much more you can ask for in a dryer sheet!
We didn't see any signs that they were leaving any residue or oils on our clothes, and we love that they can be composted after use!
Another little thing we liked is that each dryer sheet has a perforation down the middle, which means you can easily tear it in half and double the number of loads you can squeeze out of a box!
If you're thrifty like us, and don't mind having slightly less fragrance, you'll like this little life hack!
Conclusions
Personally, we avoid fabric softeners and dryer sheets in general because their ingredients tend to increase the risk of respiratory effects and skin irritation and allergies.
Of course, some of our clothes do come out of the dryer with more static than we'd like, and definitely not as soft as they could be!
We do realize that many people prefer to use dryer sheets for their softness and anti-static results, and most babies will be completely fine with the ingredients. Totally understandable, and we think the Grab Green baby dryer sheets are a decent option if you choose to go that route!
Out of the dryer, the clothes smelled good, showed minimal static, and were a little softer.
Combine that with Grab Green's eco-friendly composable materials, and you've got a win-win!
Where to Buy Grab Green Baby Products
We suggest purchasing Grab Green baby laundry detergent pods and dryer sheets directly through the Grab Green website.
Grab Green tends to offer the best discounts, and they have an awesome subscribe and save program you can take advantage of.
Of course, you can also purchase them through other major retailers such as Amazon (see them here).
You can also click the below image to check the current prices.
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