You don’t even need to be that concerned about the future of the planet (though why on earth wouldn’t you be?) either.  Much that is ‘green’ is also frugal and healthy.  Avoiding exposure to harmful chemicals is just as important for you, your kids and pets, as it is for the micro-organisms residing in our water-ways.

Personally I don’t really think it matters what your motivations are, so long as you do something to rely less heavily on bleaches and harmful disinfectants that do nobody any good at all.  Yes your toilet bowl might shine so bright you feel satisfied you are doing your job of keeping house and home spic and span.  But at what cost?

Re-evaluating your routines, and changing just one thing a month, to something a little more environmentally friendly will do you the world of good, as the one responsible for keeping the home clean too.  You don’t really want to be breathing in all those toxic fumes do you?

By looking for traditional ways to tackle the chores you can avoid both dangerous products, and also expensive ones too.  There are so many cheap cleaning options; from baking soda to scrub the bath tub, to white vinegar to disinfect your counter tops.  You don’t have to pay much for the greenest cleaners, and you don’t have to have a closet full of bottles you would rather your children didn’t get hold of.

And don’t think your new flower scented, organic product with its pretty green bottle is necessarily the best option either.  Think more basic than that.  You need to aim for:

• Non toxic cleaners
• No chlorine bleach
• Concentrated cleaners
• Recyclable packaging
• Readily bio-degradable ingredients
• Safe to use – and that means often choosing items designed to be used in the work-place, since they must pass far more stringent health and safety requirements as far as user exposure is concerned

More basic things to consider are:

• Using less water to rinse those products away
• Avoiding irritants (even natural ones) such as citrus oils
• What cloths / sponges etc are you using – can they be recycled or re-used?
• How sterile does your home really need to be?  There is far too much emphasis on doing away with every bacteria or germ in the home.  In some cases this is a must, but most of us live far more healthy allergy free lives if we come into some contact with these naturally occurring organisms.

Enjoy your clean home but not to the expense of your health (or indeed the planets), and make at least one change today towards more Environmentally aware green cleaning.

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Safe and mild, the range of Simple Green Cleaners is endless.  Each item can tackle a multitude of different tasks.  Earlier we looked at the ultimate Simple Green Scourer – a cheap green product if ever there was one.  Here we’re moving on to the ultimate Green Disinfectant.  Another cheap and simple cleaner, which you can never stop finding uses for.  Yet mild enough not to be worried about using or keeping in the cleaning cupboard.  The perfect Eco Green Cleaning Product if ever there was one.

Simple Green Disinfectant

Disinfectant cleaners are rarely Green or Environmentally Friendly.  This is because to ensure every microbe is destroyed they tend to contain pretty toxic substances such as ammonia and bleach.  The ultimate Simple Green Disinfectant is very different.  Admittedly it won’t be used in hospitals.  But unless your home is full of immuno-suppressed folks do you really need that kind of antibacterial cleaning?

White Vinegar – Click for Full Range

The best Simple Green Disinfectant uses one ingredient which is 100% natural.  In fact it is actually a bi-product of the drinks industry which gives it pretty fantastic ecological credentials.  And, as far as safety is concerned, this is a Simple Green Cleaning Product you can drink if you like – or just use as most of us do; to liven up a plate of fries or a salad.

Yes, you guessed it I am talking about vinegar as a green disinfectant.  You’ve already got some I’m sure, so why not try it out?

People think because vinegar is safe to drink it surely cannot be that tough as a Green Cleaning Product.  But, they are wrong.  Vinegar has been used for centuries as a food preservative because it is such a powerful destroyer of micro-organisms.  It’s high acidity makes life impossible for microbes in your pickles and it can do the same on your work surfaces.

The only thing about vinegar is that you must remember to buy the highest acidity you can, if you really want your Simple Green Cleaning Product to act as a disinfectant or anti-bacterial cleaner.  5% acidity is fine, and is what you will usually find.  You can use any type you like, but distilled malt is usually the most economical.  Again buy in bulk for the best savings on your Simple Green Cleaning Products.

This makes for one incredibly Safe Disinfectant, one you definitely won’t mind having in your home.  But, for all it being a true All Natural Cleaning Product it still works.  It has lots of uses.  This Simple Cleaner is not just an anti-bacterial cleaner it is also a multipurpose degreaser.   Able to cut through grease and soap scum it will even tackle limescale and can be used to keep your windows bright and smear free!  This definitely one of the most useful Simple Green Cleaning Products, not just a Green Disinfectant.

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But you do need to ensure you are still careful with those products.  When you buy Green Cleaning Products always read the labels.  They are likely to be kinder to you and your home as well as the environment.  But allergies, even to all natural products are not uncommon.  Citrus derivatives are widely used, being both anti-bacterial, insect repellent and offering natural enticing perfumes.  But allergies to citrus oils are extremely common so still take care.

Green Cleaning Basics

Remember that green cleaning is not just about choosing the most environmentally cleaner.  It is also about using less products full stop.  Using less water too all helps to lower your carbon footprint.  The fewer resources you use the kinder you are being to the planet.

Your home doesn’t need to be any less clean for using a little less detergent or forgoing the fabric softener though.  It just needs a little retraining.  We have grown accustomed to using vast quantities of products.  It isn’t helped by the manufacturers who insist on telling us to fill the cap to full for every wash or to use a certain volume in each pail of water.  The truth is you can usually get by using a lot less than the makers suggest.

A simple trick is to switch to Eco Wash Balls or Soap Nuts to do the laundry.  They are much kinder to your clothes and the environment and perform extremely well for most loads.  However, you will sometimes find people bemoaning their lack of power when dealing with really dirty washing.  That’s not something to concern yourself with and certainly no reason not to use them.  Simply keep a back-up supply of your favorite, green laundry detergent and some simple soap to use when things really need a bit more power to shift stains or stubborn dirt.

Doing your bit, by using kinder Eco Cleaning Products most of the time, is worth the switch.  Even if you still keep a secret stash of something far stronger to use on occasion.

Buy Eco Cleaning Products

Even if you don’t only buy Eco Cleaning Products it helps to purchase some.  As many as you are comfortable with.  But whilst the ingredients list is a good guide to their green cleaning credentials don’t forget the obvious common sense stuff too.

All environmentally friendly activity needs to look at the bigger picture.  So check the packaging, you want the least amount necessary and it should be easy to recycle of course.  Packaging produced from recycled materials is great if you can get it too.  Probably more important is that the contents are concentrated.  It might cost you a little more but it means you bring less packaging home in the first place.  Plus of course you use less time and energy traipsing your Eco Cleaning Products back from the store.

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I am sure many people full of good intentions buy the odd green cleaning product to ‘help the environment’. Some want to reduce the risk of exposure to toxins their family encounters at home. But, before we start replacing a specific chemical cleaner with a green cleaning product we need to see if it is worth making the switch.

Some of the chemical cleaners in our homes may not be so dangerous anyway, so it makes sense to look at the worst offenders first.  Start with the most toxic, dangerous or polluting chemical cleaners, and swap those for a green cleaning product first.  That way your change has the biggest and quickest impact on the health of your family and the planet.

So, what are the chemicals in conventional cleaners we should try to avoid?

Alcohol

Alcohol of various types is found in a wide range of chemical cleaners including all-purpose cleaners, disinfectants, glass cleaners, metal polishes, air-fresheners and degreasers.

The various types of alcohol often found in household cleaners are:

• Ethanol
• Isobropanol
• Methanol

All alcohol is poisonous.  Ingestion or inhalation can cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, depression, and stomach pain. Ingestion in large amounts could lead to blindness and even death.  Long term exposure may be related to sinus and throat cancers.

Ammonia

Found in all-purpose cleaners, disinfectants drain cleaner, floor cleaners, furniture polish, kitchen cleaner, metal polish, oven cleaner and toilet bowl cleaner.

Ammonia is a powerful irritant for eyes, nose and lungs.   For some, ammonia will cause rashes and even burns. When mixed with bleach, chloramine gas is produced which is highly poisonous to breathe.

Bleach

Found in bathroom cleaners, disinfectants, laundry bleaches, tile cleaners and toilet bowl cleaners.

The names to look out for are:

• Chlorine Bleach
• Sodium Hypochlorite

This is one of the most common causes of poisoning at home.  Bleach is a skin irritant and when ingested may damage the mouth, food pipe and stomach. Mixed with acids, bleach will form poisonous chlorine gas and mixed with ammonia, toxic chloramine gas.

Butyl Cellosolve

Found in degreasers, heavy-duty all-purpose cleaners and window cleaners. When absorbed into the bloodstream this can damage blood, liver, kidneys and the central nervous system.  The main problem with this as an ingredient in household cleaners is that it is easily absorbed into your system through the skin.

Carbolic Acid (Phenol)

Found in air fresheners, disinfectants and furniture polish.  This is a probable carcinogen.  Spilt on skin carbolic acid can cause swelling, burns and hives.   Ingestion can result in convulsions and even death.   Even low concentrations can cause gangrene, burns and loss of feeling.

Cresol

Found in detergents, disinfectants and herbicides.   Some companies, due to its toxicity are slowly discarding this, as an ingredient. Highly caustic, contact with cresol will cause a prickly or intense burning sensation followed by numbness.  Cresol poisoning causes diarrhoea, vomiting, headaches and dizziness. It has been linked to liver, kidney and lung damage.

Formaldehyde

Found in detergents, disinfectants, furniture polish and water softeners.  It is likely that your home is polluted with formaldehyde anyway, from the fixtures and fittings rather than just the cleaners you use. Chipboard, plywood, mattresses, foam, plastics and insulation materials often make use of formaldehyde as a preservative.  Kitchens, with laminated cupboards and compressed worktops are often the worst polluted regions of our homes.

In lower concentrations formaldehyde is a suspected carcinogen and irritant, causing nausea, headaches irritated eyes and nose.   Ingestion can lead to stomach pain, bleeding and even death.

Glycols

Found in degreasers, dry-cleaning chemicals, dyes, floor cleaners and paints.  There is a wide variety of glycols used, some are highly toxic, others relatively non-toxic.   Glycols are easily absorbed through the skin, and from breathing vapour via the lungs, into the bloodstream.  There they can damage kidney, liver and central nervous system.  Many are simple irritants to skin, eyes, nose and throat

Hydrocarbons (Petroleum Distillates)

Found in furniture polish, metal polish, oven cleaner and pesticides.   The hydrocarbons range from the decidedly non-toxic such as petroleum jelly, to the pretty toxic skin irritants.  All are toxic if ingested.  Perhaps the biggest concern is how polluting the petroleum industry is and using hydrocarbons perpetuates this damage being done to the planet.

Hydrochloric and Phosphoric Acids

Found in bathroom cleaners, limescale remover, metal polishes, tile and toilet bowl cleaners.  These strong acids can damage your soft tissues.  Burns, scarring and even blindness can result from spills and splashes of these acids.   The vapour alone is a strong irritant to eyes, nose and throat.

Hydrofluoric Acid

This is a scary one!   Found in rust removers and aluminium cleaners. On contact this acid will penetrate skin and tissue until it reaches bone.   Most worryingly there is no pain associated with the acid’s penetration so if you do not notice a spill you could be in real trouble.

Lye (Sodium Hydroxide)

Found in drain cleaners, oven cleaners, bathroom cleaners and toilet bowl cleaners.  Lye is an extremely caustic base or alkaline material.   It can quickly dissolve, skin and soft tissue, so splashes to the eyes can easily cause blindness.  Mixed with acids, lye can release harmful vapours and mixed with water will result in boiling temperatures, steam and frequent splashing.

Many drain cleaners are concentrations of 90% or more, lye so must be treated with absolute care.

Naphthalene

Found in air fresheners, carpet cleaners, mothballs and toilet bowl cleaners. This is dangerous to breathe, causing headaches, vomiting and excessive sweating.  Naphthalene is very toxic to small children, so beware of storing children’s clothes in mothballs which can result in serious poisoning of the infant.

PDCBs (Paradichlorobenzenes)

Found in insecticides, mothballs, room deodorisers and toilet fresheners. These are toxic to breathe or ingest and a common eye and nose irritant.

Perchloroethylene

Found in dry-cleaning solutions and spot removers. This is another suspected carcinogen.  Exposure causes dizziness, nausea and tremors.  Long term exposure can even damage the liver and central nervous system.

Propellants (Propane, Butane & CFCs)

Found in all aerosols including air fresheners and polish. These are relatively safe but can be dangerous when inhaled. And, the whole point of sprays is that they send out easy to breathe, small particles! They are irritating to throat, nose and lungs and can even cause death if inhaled regularly or in excessive amounts (such as done by youngsters as a cheap ‘high’).

Sulfuric Acid

Found in metal polish and toilet bowl cleaners.   This acid gives of very dangerous fumes.  Contact (even in diluted form) can burn skin and soft tissues.  Be especially careful of splashes in eyes that could lead to blindness.

TCE (Trichloroethylene)

Found in metal polishes and spot removers. TCE is carcinogenic and narcotic. It is irritating to eyes and nose, can dry out skin and cause dizziness or even memory loss when inhaled.

Do You Really Need to Worry About all Those Toxic Chemicals?

Many of these chemicals will be found in relatively small quantities in your commercial cleaning products.   So, you may think why bother making the switch to a green cleaning product.  Well, personally all I have no desire to risk exposure to all those toxic chemicals at all.  It is so difficult to tell how toxic a cleaner is alone. Let alone, the difficulty in determining how toxic those cleaners are when mixed with all the other cleaners I would use in one bout of housework!

Also, I know that I never carry out my household chores in the same kind of controlled environment that all the chemicals are tested in.  Is my bathroom a well-ventilated space?  Well, yes, when the window is open, but what if it’s blowing a gale and I still need to clean the bathroom?

I worry about children and pets getting hold of those toxic chemical cleaners too. Even if they don’t immediately set about devouring the contents, they may well spill those toxic cleaners on things they will damage.

Also, if a chemical is toxic to me, chances are a variety of other people are being exposed to that toxicity to bring that chemical cleaner to my home.  I am thinking of those people working to produce and transport those chemicals to the store.

Even, if I know not to ingest a certain substance, there will be small amounts left over which are thrown in the rubbish and eventually hit landfill sites. Those chemicals do not stop being toxic just because they leave our homes. In fact, if something is mildly toxic to us humans, you can bet it is very toxic to some forms of wildlife.

I am not silly enough to think I can live a ‘modern’ life without impacting on the environment.   I know some do, but I am happy with my home comforts and bought furnishings. I try not to be too wasteful but I am far from completely self-sufficient. But, by using green cleaning products I can reduce that impact in a very straightforward way.

More selfishly, I feel happier using an Eco cleaning product. I feel less at risk of developing a headache from cleaning the bathroom.   That then, makes me feel less at risk of doing myself long-term damage from inhaling all those unknown compounds.  If I feel healthier I feel happier  and a lot more likely to keep on top of all the cleaning chores!

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More and more people are trying to find an effective Green Cleaner for the entire range of cleaning jobs around the home.  There are countless brands telling us that they are now the best, Safe Eco Green Cleaning Product in town.  But why are we so interested in switching to a Safe Cleaning Product and is there really any point?  Do we need to make cleaning Eco friendly?

I guess it depends on what kind of household cleaning product you’re thinking about switching from.  I know lots of people who switch to an Eco Cleaning Product for their hand dishwashing detergent, but use conventional products for everything else.  That is nearly pointless behaviour.  And, sadly, it proves the point that many people jump on the ‘Eco Cleaning Product’ or ‘Green Cleaner’ bandwagon without any real thought to why they should switch.  I think a bottle of ‘Ecover’ or similar green hand dishwashing detergent looks nice on the counter-top.  But does switching that one product make any real difference to the pollutants in your home or the waste by-products of your home?  Honest answer – not really!

It would be great if that switch to Green Cleaner for hand dishwashing was the start of a more generalised switch to Eco Cleaners.  But, all too often the change stops there.  We need to make all our cleaning Eco friendly!

What’s Wrong with Conventional Household Cleaning Products?

I think the best place to start is to have a look at the most common conventional cleaning products used at home.  Maybe some are worse than others are.  It would make sense to start with the most toxic, most polluting and most down right dangerous.  Switch those to an Eco cleaning alternative product and we will have had a much bigger impact on the dangers at home and the toxic waste our households are responsible for.

To look at whether a household cleaner is ‘dangerous’ you would think you could just look at the label and see.  But the cleaning business is big business so the manufacturers do not make it that simple.  Sadly they are not required to list every ingredient or its volume in the finished product.  But, even if they did list everything used to make a certain item it would not help most of us.  Without a chemical background we cannot identify much of what goes into household cleaners anyway.

Even if we know exactly what an ingredient is, and what it does, we also need to consider what it does in conjuction with all the other ingredients in that cleaner plus any others it can come into contact with.  Phew!  That’s a lot of analysis.

Then there is the research about safety and toxicity of those ingredients.  Much of the science is carried out by laboratories with a vested interest in the manufacturer succeeding in getting an item licensed.  After all that is how the bills are paid.  I doubt this is common practice but if it occurs just once we don’t know what we are cleaning our homes with.  In 1983 Industrial Bio-Test, an important chemical testing laboratory was found guilty of providing falsified research that was used to support the registration of chemicals with the United States Environmental Protection Agency.  In 1992 another laboratory; Craven Lakes was found guilty of the same.

This proves that chemical testing results can be skewed.  I grant you two cases proved in twenty years is not proof of an endemic problem, and to be honest I doubt it is that common an occurrence.  It doesn’t need to be.  With nearly 70,000 chemicals already licensed for use in the US alone, most manufacturers do not need to use new ingredients in their concoctions!

The main issue I have with conventional household cleaning products is that the safety instructions take no account of how we will actually use an item.

For example, foaming oven cleaner should not be used in an enclosed space and the fumes should not be breathed in.  But, most of us will be leaning into that oven to clean it.  While we may have opened kitchen windows and doors we are still working very close to the toxic cleaner.  There is a similar issue with bathroom cleaners, many of which should only be used in a well-ventilated space.  How then do we safely clean an enclosed shower cubicle with them?

Another big issue is mixing up those chemical concoctions.  Bleach mixed with acid can give rise to an extremely dangerous mix of chlorine gas.  And, though we are instructed not to mix chemical cleaners I believe the chances are many people have used a limescale remover and a bleach-cleaner in their bathroom during the same cleaning stint.  The problem with chemical cleaners is they promise they earth and when they don’t deliver we often throw caution to the wind and throw more chemicals on the problem.

In truth, the way we use our chemical cleaners at home is probably one of the biggest concerns with them.  Glass and window cleaners for instance are relatively safe.  They only tend to contain a very small amount of harmful ammonia.  But, we spritz those cleaners and get up real close, breathing in that fine mist allowing ammonia onto our lungs.  It is not ideal is it?

My approach to making the switch from conventional to Eco cleaning products is to prioritise.  Before worrying about switching to Ecover hand dishwashing detergent I wanted to switch all those household cleaners I found to be:

• Toxic to my home and family.
• Toxic and polluting to the environment.
• Irritating to my home and family.

So I listed all those cleaners that have fumes that irritate my throat or nose when using them.  Then, cleaners with dangerous ingredients, including possibly fatal poisons.  Then I looked at the polluting waste that came from my house as a result of using a product.  Did it mean our wastewater was impossible to treat?  Would our trash contain chemicals likely to pollute groundwater etc?

It is a tough job to research, and a lot of the conclusions are very personal.  Circumstances dictate what kind of toxicity you deem dangerous.  I think anything which could be fatal if found my small children is a no-no, but that’s just my personal choice.

I did not make a switch overnight, but changed one product as it ran out.  This gave me time to find a green cleaner whether bought or homemade, with which to replace my conventional cleaner.  Gradually I am making my cleaning Eco friendly, but it really does take time!

I have slowly switched to what I consider to be safe cleaners around the home.  But, I am a realist.  There is absolutely no point in simply swapping all your conventional cleaners for an environmentally friendly alternatives.  For a start, you won’t find replacements for everything.  If you use drain cleaner, for instance, you will not find a green alternative that dissolves all that muck in quite the same way.

To move away from chemical household cleaners and make cleaning Eco friendly, requires a change in expectations and attitudes too.

Green Cleaning will require some activity on your part! Chemical cleaners have promised an ever-decreasing role for us in the actual cleaning process.  Just squirt it on, leave, and then rinse off.  It takes strong chemicals to dissolve dirt and grease without any mechanical action.  If you want to clean with a green cleaner expect to at least do some rubbing!

That is not to say green cleaners are not good at cleaning, it is just they are  often not the miracle workers we have come to expect!  We  have to start taking part in the process of cleaning our homes!

I also think moving away from chemical cleaners should go hand in hand with less reliance on anti-bacterial promises!  Children suffer from more allergies than ever before.  It is my belief that a large factor in these allergies is an unnaturally weak immune system because children encounter fewer safe microbes around their home than ever before.  Not all those bacteria are dangerous!  And, no matter how often you spray an antibacterial cleaner, you will not irradicate them, you only spread more allergy causing chemical particles to float around your home!

Rather than rely on some magic potion we need to take responsibility and return to proper hygiene around the home.  Highlight those areas where dangerous bacteria may be of concern and start cleaning them properly, regularly.  The main culprits will be chopping boards and hands.  But you don’t need to spray anti-bacterials all over them.  Warm soapy washes for hands, in running water and hot soapy or salty washes for cutting boards please!

I hope this site will be of interest to those of you considering a switch to more environmentally friendly safe cleaners.  Whether those Eco Green Cleaning Products are homemade or bought commercially is a matter of preference.  We will talk about the two.  Whether you want to ditch all your old cleaners or just a few of the particularly nasty ones this site should help you find the ideal green cleaning product to make your cleaning Eco friendly.

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