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These soap nuts or soap berries are not actually nuts, but the dried fruits of a small tree called the Sapindus Mukorossi, a relative of the lychee that's native to the Himalayas and the mountainous region between India and Nepal. These soap berries have a long history of use in Indian households, and are now being sold worldwide as a renewable and compostable alternative to synthetic laundry detergents, shampoos and soaps.
The shells of the ‘nut’ contain saponin, which produces an effect similar to soap. Once picked and left to dry in the sun they can be used as a kind of natural surfactant. Surfactants are polar molecules, one end of which is hydrophilic (dissolves in aqueous environments) and the other end of which is hydrophobic (repels water and absorbs or bonds strongly to oils and fats). The cleaning effects of ordinary detergents comes about because the surfactant's hydrophobic end bonds strongly with oily dirt particles and surrounds them, leaving the water-loving hydrophilic end sticking out. This allows the resulting oil-and-surfactant ‘bubble’ to dissolve in water and be washed away.
Soap nuts can be used whole or pre-boiled to make a liquid detergent. If used whole, they can be used at temperatures between 30°C and 90°C in a conventional washing machine. For one load of washing, four to six half nutshells are placed in a cotton bag and washed in the drum with your laundry. The nuts can be reused several times, but when the colour of the nuts changes from brown to black that indicates that all saponin had been exhausted. Since these berries don't contain bleach or whiteners we can't expect the same results as industrially manufactured detergents, but according to proponents of soap nuts, difficult stains can be pre-treated with gall soap or some other form of natural stain remover.
Sample ID: 822
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