Do you ever notice after cleaning your bathroom with conventional household products your nose runs a little bit or your throat burns? Is it possible my traditional cleaning products seem to cause irritation and allergic reactions, and I doubt I’m the only one. A quick walk down the household cleaning product aisle is all the proof I need, as terms such as “green,” “environmentally friendly” and “natural” seem to be more prevalent than ever before.
Keeping a clean house is a lot of work. From the kitchen dishwasher and laundry room dryer to the bathroom tub and dust balls on hardwood floors, cupboards need to be stocked with numerous cleaning products, all of which can potentially leave irritants, allergens, toxic residues and films, as well as environmentally damaging toxins. So a new approach to household cleaning products has taken flight, looking to natural sources to polish and disinfect.
“We all know by now that we can clean just as well without the chemicals, so why use them?” said Kipling Wagner, assistant marketing manager at Ecover. “Try comparing a stroll down the cleaning aisle full of conventional cleaners versus the same stroll down the cleaning aisle at a store that stocks only responsibly made cleaners. The difference is you won’t wind up with watery eyes, an itchy nose and even perhaps nausea and dizziness. It has been widely researched that our homes are typically the most polluted places we inhabit all day. This is largely in part due to the cleaning products we keep under our sinks.”
Martin Wolf, “scienceman” at Seventh Generation, noted it’s not simply a matter of avoiding chemicals. “All substances in nature, and in cleaning products, are chemicals. Water is a chemical,” he noted. “There is no such thing as a ‘chemical-free’ product. Natural and organic ingredients are made from plant or animal ingredients; thus, they can be renewed. Most surfactants and many other ingredients in conventional products are made from petroleum. Petroleum is a limited, non-renewable resource.”
Ultimately, more companies are turning to naturally derived ingredients that are not only good for the consumer’s home, but better for the environment. “The idea is to have the minimum negative impact on our environment,” Wagner explained. “By manufacturing cleaning products with sustainable ingredients that have been responsibly sourced and then manufactured in ecological factories, we take great measures to reduce our negative impact.”