San Francisco Giants seek the best record—environmentally, if not in the standings

The San Francisco Giants aren't cleaning up in this year's division race. The Giants are 7.5 games behind the NL West-leading Los Angeles Dodgers, and even after last night's fine pitching performance by their young ace Tim Lincecum, remain 3.5 games back of the wild-card-leading Colorado Rockies and have only a 14.2 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to CoolStandings.com.

While its attention is clearly on the Major League Baseball playoffs, the club has also focused on greener cleaning for its uniforms, having abandoned laundry detergents with phosphates, chemicals that can boost cleaning performance but also promote harmful algae growth in waterways. The team's official supplier of laundry detergent is Vaska Products, a Berkeley, California, manufacturer that claims all its cleaning products are free of phosphates. (The Giants use a commercial product.) Read our latest report on laundry detergents, in which we note that manufacturers can make green claims without any checks or federal standards. The full story and ratings are available to subscribers.

"We want the very best for our players and for the environment, and when Vaska demonstrated that their approach effectively cleans tough game stains, left the uniforms softer and smelling better than ever, and is gray-water safe, we did not hesitate to use their products in our clubhouse," Mike Murphy, the Giants clubhouse manager, told Treehugger.com.

Switching to a phosphate-free detergent is part of a broader green initiative by the Giants at their AT&T Park (shown). The team has incorporated solar technology throughout the stadium, replaced hundreds of incandescent bulbs with energy-efficient compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and installed a new irrigation system designed to reduce water use for the field by up to 50 percent.

Phosphates were banned from use in consumer powdered laundry detergents by the mid-1990s, and liquid laundry detergents have never contained them. But it's a different story for dishwasher detergents, many of which still contain phosphates. Some states have banned dishwasher detergents with phosphates.

For our latest report on dishwasher detergents (ratings available to subscribers), we tested several phosphate-free products. Several performed worse than cleaners with phosphates, but phosphate-free Method Smarty Dish did score very good overall.—Daniel DiClerico | e-mail | Twitter | Forums | Facebook

Essential information: Read the October 2009 issue of Consumer Reports and our new Energy Saving & Green Living guide for more advice on lowering your utility bills, including an in-depth look at solar water heaters and wood-pellet stoves.