Will Stealth Soap Wash?

Outdoor types: clean up your act

A soap made especially for outdoor types? Are they trying to tell us something? Actually, rather than a marketing ploy to convince skateboarders to wash more often, the Outdoor Extreme Laundry Soap is for cleaning your gear – not your face. It claims to be the first 100% natural laundry soap designed specifically for outdoorsmen and women.

Manufacturer Selestial Soap says it's “designed specifically for the needs of hunting, tactical and athletic gear where scent, camouflage and maintaining the properties of high-tech fabrics are critical.”

Apparently many detergents contain UV brighteners and dyes which can reflect natural light after a few washes. For military personnel, this glow could be picked up when viewed with night-vision equipment in the field. And hunters need their clothing to be scent-free and devoid of UV brighteners or dyes that animals could spot.

According to Selestial's owner Ruth Smith, one 16-oz bottle of Outdoor Extreme Laundry Soap retails for $12.99 (it's currently only available in the U.S.) and “will wash 50 loads of laundry in a standard machine or up to 100 in a high-efficiency machine."