Taking Us to the Cleaners

There's something rather satisfying about buying a refill. You're saving money, using less plastic and doing your bit for the planet. All very virtuous. And, being a Yorkshireman at heart when it comes to spending money, I rather like the idea of getting the same stuff for less.

Lidl, along with several other supermarkets, sells refill pouches of its own-brand washing-up liquid. Instead of buying another plastic bottle, you simply refill the one you've already got. Perfectly sensible.

Except I think there's a fiddle going on.

Hayley has been complaining for ages that the refill washing-up liquid doesn't go as far as the original bottled stuff. I've been poo-poohing the idea, naturally. Washing-up liquid is washing-up liquid, isn't it?

In retrospect, dismissing the observations of someone with a PhD in biochemistry on the subject of a household chemical may not have been my finest intellectual achievement.

Anyway, I tested her theory entirely by accident. I happened to buy a bottle of the original stuff rather than a refill and immediately noticed something peculiar.

Whereas the refill liquid comes squirting out of the bottle with hardly any effort, the original stuff requires a considerably firmer squeeze.

Considerably.

It's much thicker.

Now, before someone starts explaining that viscosity isn't necessarily a measure of detergent strength, I know. But I also know how much washing-up liquid I normally use, and Hayley was right. You need roughly twice as much of the refill to do the same job.

Which rather suggests that someone has been adding water. And if that's what's happening, it's a beautifully simple little wheeze. Sell the customer a refill at a slightly lower price per litre, tell them they're saving money and reducing plastic waste, then sit back while they use twice as much of the stuff.

Unless the refill costs less than half the price per litre, they're actually paying more to wash the dishes.

Brilliant.

And the environmental argument? Well, yes, you're using less plastic packaging per purchase. But if you're getting through the contents twice as quickly, you're buying more of it. Which rather takes the shine off the whole saving-the-planet business.

Now, before Lidl's lawyers start sharpening their pencils, I'm not claiming to have proved that they've deliberately watered anything down. It might be a different formulation. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation for why the refill is thinner and, in our experience, doesn't go nearly as far.

I'd be fascinated to hear it.

In particular, I'd like to know whether the refill contains the same concentration of active cleaning ingredients as the stuff that comes in the original bottle. Because when I buy a refill, I rather naively expect to be buying more of the same product. Not something that simply happens to fit in the same bottle.

And this is what irritates me about the whole business. We've become so accustomed to comparing prices per litre, per kilogram or per hundred grams that we tend to overlook the rather more important question of what we're actually getting for our money.

A cheaper litre isn't much of a bargain if you need two of them.

Supermarkets are forever telling us how much we're saving. Smaller packets, supposedly improved recipes, economy refills and endless little green symbols reassuring us that we're helping to rescue the planet. Perhaps we should spend a little less time admiring the price label and a little more time examining what's inside.

I used to think taking us to the cleaners was just an expression. Apparently, you can do it with washing-up liquid.

Try it yourself. Buy a bottle of the original stuff, compare it with the refill and see whether you notice the difference.

Unless, of course, you're the sort of bloke who leaves the washing-up to his wife.