Payment processing, Friday 30th January

On Friday January 30th, our payment processor will be conducting maintenance to their website beginning at 7.00 am GMT and lasting approximately 30 minutes.

During this time you will not be able to make payments.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Payment processing, Friday 9th January

On Friday 9th January, our payment processer will be conducting maintenance to their servers beginning at 7am for approximately one hour. During this time we will be unable to accept payments. Apologies for any inconvenience caused during this time. Normal service resumes immediately upon completion of their scheduled maintenance.

Friendly Baby January Competition

The Friendly Baby January Competition is now live. This month on Friendly Baby you could win one of five Ecover Laundry Starter Kits.

Cloth nappy users are more aware than most of the importance of choosing your laundry detergent carefully. After all nobody wants to coat their baby's nappies in chemicals and for this to be in contact with baby's delicate skin.

Ecover products are made to be effective and have the absolute minimum effect on the environment. They're based on sustainable plant and mineral ingredients, chosen to work well and limit the chemicals in your home and the environment. All their products originate from their own ecological factories.

Almost all cleaning products are based on surfactants. They work by lowering the surface tension of water to allow dirt to be removed more easily. Conventional cleaning products tend to be based on petrochemical surfactants which are derived from finite oil supplies and are often poorly degradable and toxic to aquatic life. At Ecover they have always favoured plant-based surfactants, which are renewable, have minimal aquatic toxicity and also biodegrade quickly and completely.

Their new laundry formulations contain a pioneering new surfactant that has an even lower aquatic toxicity to the surfactant they were using previously. The surfactant is based on rapeseed oil (non GMO) that is grown in continental Europe and as a result means that they have been able to reduce the distance ingredients are transported.

The new surfactant is the result of almost two years of close collaboration between Ecover’s R&D department and one of their ingredient suppliers. This means that Ecover are currently the only company in the world to be using this new ingredient.

Ecover's new non-integrated washing powder has been approved by the Good Housekeeping Institute (GHI) who tested the product’s performance against leading brands and supermarket own-label powders.

To find out more about Ecover and their developments sign up to their newsletter.

So for your chance to win an Ecover Laundry Starter Kit pop over to our competition page.