From soap to nuts

I thought I'd share this product which I found recently in my local wholefood shop It combines my interest in plants and natural products with my concern about the climate emergency and the future of the environment.
They are 'soap nuts'. A 300 gram bag is  enough for 500 or more normal machine washes as you need only 4 or 5 per load and they can be used 5 times over. They are fruit of the genus Sapindus, of which there are several species growing across Asia and the Americas, and they are used for washing in many different countries.

They seem to work fine (although I haven't used them with anything heavily soiled) and when the surfactants in the nuts are used up you can put them in the compost.

We are all inclined to wash our clothes and our selves more than is necessary having been persuaded by sly marketing that we risk being smelly, unhygienic, slovenly and unpopular if we don't. At the same time we are polluting rivers and seas with the products we use, especially if these are not 'environmentally friendly'. It's nuts. So why not use nuts?