Sea Mild helps you go green as you clean Strong on dirty clothes, easy on the environment

The Feitsui Reservoir is the most important reservoir in Taiwan, providing water to more than 5 million people in the greater Taipei area. It’s no wonder that it has some of the most stringent water quality regulations and requirements. Yet, over the past two years, the Feitsui Reservoir Administration Bureau has done an interesting thing. Bureau officials have gone door-to-door to households upstream of the reservoir to give out free environmentally-friendly detergent. They have also worked hard to persuade the people living in this area not to use any other detergents.

The detergent that was given out to the people upstream of the reservoir, in fact, comes from one of Taiwan’s very own small-to-medium enterprises: Sea Mild Biotech. Established eighteen years ago with the vision of bringing green, eco-friendly products to the market, Sea Mild Biotech is the only company in Taiwan to have received Taiwan’s Green Mark certification for its products. Yet, despite the high quality of its products and the widespread praise they have received, Sea Mild Biotech actually did not turn a profit for its first eight years. It has only been in recent years that it has started to become profitable and be taken more seriously in the marketplace.

Perhaps that’s why Feitsui Reservoir Administration Bureau officials decided to use Sea Mild Biotech’s detergent, since it would enable them to solve some of the reservoir’s most serious problems. For example, due to the long-term use of other detergents by people upstream, the waste water flowing into the reservoir contained large amounts of phosphate, which can cause a process called eutrophication to occur. This causes algae to increase quickly, which, in turn, depletes the oxygen in the water. If the oxygen supply in the water is exhausted, then the fish in the reservoir will likely die of suffocation.

Another problem officials faced is that many detergents add a chemical called nonylphenol. This chemical is very powerful and inexpensive, and in Taiwan, about 10,006 thousand metric tons of this chemical are used every year, with about 10 percent used in cleaning products, including dishwashing soap, laundry detergent , and other cleaning solutions. Unfortunately, the nonylphenol compound also contains what are known as environmental hormones or endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and medical research has confirmed that environmental hormones can lead to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and testicular cancer, as well as reduced fertility, a suppressed immune system, behavioral changes, and so on. What’s more, for aquatic life, such as fish, these chemicals can accumulate in their reproductive systems and, in particular, their eggs. Over time, this could lead to a sharp drop in the male-to-female ratio, which might eventually lead to an ecological imbalance.

Fortunately, Sea Mild Biotech’s detergents are made from three main raw materials: coconut oil, salt, and lemon oil. In addition, all of these products contain no fluorescent agents or fossil-base raw materials. Additionally, they are more than 95 percent biodegradable, with all packaging materials completely free of PVC, chlorine, and synthetic plastics. At the same time, Sea Mild Biotech’s products are very effective at cleaning, providing high solubility, high concentration, low foaming, and a good rinse.

Within one year of distribution of Sea Mild Biotech’s detergent, Feitsui Reservoir Administration Bureau official discovered that the overall water quality of the reservoir had improved greatly, with a series of nine tests showing that the amount of phosphorus in the water had been reduced by about 27.5 percent, or about 3450 kilograms. This collaboration between the government and the community is not just a success story for the area, however—it is also a success story for Sea Mild Biotech. Now, more than 300 government agencies in Taiwan are Sea Mild Biotech customers, and several foreign brands have begun to place orders with the company.

So, though washing dishes or clothes with detergent is something that needs to be done every day, it doesn’t have to be harmful to the environment. As the success of Sea Mild Biotech’s products over the past few years proves, cleaning products can make the world a cleaner, greener place.