How to Green Your Cleaning
by Team Treehugger, Worldwide on 01.30.07
What’s the Big Deal?
Cleaning products are everywhere in our homes and offices: on dishes, countertops, furniture, clothes, floors, windows, and floating through the air. In our war on dirt and germs we may often actually be making things worse. Most of the conventional cleaning products we all grew up with are petroleum-based and have dubious health and environmental implications. Instead of opting for cleaning products that annihilate everything in their path, there are plenty of natural products and methods that keep a house clean and fresh-smelling without the toxic side effects.Guide Navigation
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1. Cleaner, greener, meaner
As the health and environmental impacts of conventional cleaning products become more thoroughly understood, more and more brands of healthy, green, and effective cleaning products have started hitting the market and competing for that coveted place of honor under your sink. Many of these products are non-toxic, biodegradable, and made from renewable resources (not petroleum). But if designer labels aren’t for you, home-mixed cleaners can get the job done and then some. Vinegar and baking soda can be used to clean almost anything. Mix in a little warm water with either of these and you’ve got yourself an all-purpose cleaner.
2. Healthy airflow
It is not uncommon for the air inside a home or office to be more toxic than the air outside. This is because of the presence of toxic materials and substances and the fact that homes and buildings are better insulated than ever before (which is a good thing from an energy standpoint). Keeping windows open as often as possible allows fresh air in and keeps toxins flowing out. This is especially important when cleaning your home.
3. Are we breeding supergerms?
The antibacterial and antimicrobial ‘cleaners’ that many people think are necessary, especially during cold season, don’t clean hands better than soap and water, and also add to the risk of breeding “super germs,” bacteria that survive the chemical onslaught and have resistant offspring. The FDA has found that antibacterial soaps and hand cleansers do not work better than regular soap and water, and should be avoided.
4. Help your home smell soda-licious
Baking soda not only removes those strange smells coming from your fridge, it’s also a great odor-eliminator for your carpet. Just sprinkle on a little baking soda to soak up some of those odors and then vacuum it up.
5. Clean peace
Skip the store-bought air fresheners and instead try boiling cinnamon, cloves, or any other herbs you have a fondness for. Fresh chocolate chip cookies also have been known to create a friendly aroma. Also, plants may not make your house smell different but are good for filtering interior air—pretty much any broad green leaf plant will do. Peace Lilies are a favorite choice.
6. The toxic toss
When replacing your cleaning products, don’t just throw the old ones in the trash. If they’re too toxic for your home, they won’t be good for the drain or the landfill either. Many communities hold toxics & electronics recycling days and will take all of these off your hands. Throwing chemicals in the trash or down the drain means they might end up back in your water supply and come back to haunt you (see How to Green Your Water for more).
7. Drycleaners
Conventional drycleaners are the largest users of the industrial solvent called Perchloroethylene, or perc, which is toxic to humans and also creates smog. The two most common green drycleaning methods are carbon dioxide cleaning and Green Earth. Seek out cleaners that use green methods. If you do take clothes to conventional cleaners, be sure to air them outside before wearing them or putting them in the closet.
8. Green house cleaning service
For people don’t have the time to clean their own homes, fortunately there are an increasing number of green cleaning services out there to help get things spic and span. If you can’t find one in your area (or their rates are outlandish), call around until you find a service willing to use the products and methods you specify.
9. Leave the toxins at the door
Imagine what’s on your shoes at the end of the day. Bringing that oil, antifreeze, animal waste, particulate pollution, pollen, and who knows what else into the house is not good news, especially for kids and other critters that spend time on floor level. Keep the sidewalk out of your home with a good doormat or a shoeless house policy. Many green buildings now include entryway track-off systems as a means of maintaining a healthy interior environment. Less dirt also means less sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming, which means less work, water, energy, and fewer chemicals.
10. Clean design
Designing houses and other building with cleanability in mind can create spaces that are cleaner, healthier, and require fewer substances to maintain. In larger buildings, good cleanability can also be a big money-saver as cleaning costs can often add up to as much as half of a building’s total energy costs.
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1. DIY
Create your own cleaning solutions made from products you have around the house. These save money and also keep toxic chemicals out of your house. See below for suggestions on homebrewed cleaners.
2. Taking it to the cleaners
Talk to your boss/co-workers/custodial team about switching cleaning products to green cleaning products. The people most at risk from the toxic effects of cleaning chemicals are custodial workers.
3. Underneath it all
Consider replacing your carpets with wood, linoleum or other non-carpet flooring. This will reduce the toxic cleaners needed for rugs as vinegar and water works great for cleaning non-carpet floors. This can also save energy, because you won’t need to run that vacuum.
4. Clean carpets
When getting carpets steam cleaned, look for companies that use only water or natural solvents.
5. Non-disposable
Paper towels and other disposable, single-use cleaning things can be replaced with reusable clothes and mircrofiber wipes. Clean them in the dishwasher and whiten them with hydrogen peroxide when they need it. Also, when it comes to buying sponges, natural ones are biodegradable and can break down or be composted when their useful life is through. But make certain that the natural sponges you buy come from a "sponge farm" and not from a natural ecosystem.
1. 17,000: the number of petrochemicals available for home use, only 30% of which have been tested for exposure to human health and the environment.
2. 63: the number of synthetic chemical products found in the average American home, translating to roughly 10 gallons of harmful chemicals.
3. 100: the number of times higher that indoor air pollution levels can be above outdoor air pollution levels, according to US EPA estimates.
4. 275: the number of active ingredients in antimicrobials that the EPA classifies as pesticides because they are designed to kill microbes.
5. 5 billion: the number of pounds of chemicals that the institutional cleaning industry uses each year.
6. 23: the average gallons in chemicals (87 liters) that a janitor uses each year, 25% of which are hazardous.
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Here is a sampling of relevant topics and products TreeHugger has covered. Also take a dip into the TH archives for more on almost any topic you can think of. If the answer you are looking for is glaringly absent, feel free to drop a TreeHugger writer an email and raise the issue.
A TreeHugger survey polls the electorate on their use of green cleaning products.
A look at two specialty cleaning services that employ eco-friendly methods.
TreeHugger roots into the question, what do I do about clogged drains? and offers a more natural alternative to busting out the Drain-O.
Pots, pans, plastic: all are possible causes of Toxic Shock Syndrome. This Canadian report looks at over 4,000 common chemicals and their links to your health.
Good advise on taking care of your floor the way grandma used to.
Conventional dry cleaning is anything but green. Carbon dioxide and Green Earth are two friendly alternatives that get the job done.
TreeHuggers give their thoughts on Seveth Generation’s book, Naturally Clean, by CEO Jeffrey Hollender.
TreeHugger interviews Gregor Barnum, Corporate Consciousness director for Seventh Generation.
In the battle between hand washing and machine washing the dishes, who really wins?
Some products for keeping the pool naturally clean.
A how-to guide for the laundry room.
Kyeann Sayer shares some tips on how to sweat without staining.
Zeolite is a natural mineral that absorbs odors and moisture.
Some valuable technique on how to use tea tree oil around the home. http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/12/tea_tree_oil_th.php
Most of us share our home with dangerous substances—here is a review of some of the pertinent knowledge and how to steer clear.
Books we’ve covered:
Better Basics for the Home: Simple Solutions for Less Toxic Living
Clean Sweep: The Ultimate Guide to Decluttering, Detoxing and Destressing Your Home
Green Clean: The Environmentally Sound Guide to Cleaning Your Home
Naturally Clean: The Seventh Generation Guide to Safe & Healthy Non-toxic Cleaning
The Union of Concerned Scientists has a thorough list of definitions for common household cleaning products, including an explanation of what makes them harmful and alternative options.
This National Institute of Health webpage allows for searches on a variety of products, including cleaning products and their health and toxicity ratings. The database includes a multitude of companies but is limited to information provided by company reports.
Under the LEED certification system, a building can receive as many as fourteen points for green cleaning products and cleanability.
Grist offers tips on how to get your cleaning crew at work to switch to safer products.
GreenBiz.com provides in-depth reports and articles on the business breakdown of a green approach to cleaning.
The Children’s Health Environmental Coalition offers great advise on how to make your own cleaners that can handle just about any corner of the home and lays out the five products needed to clean just about anything.
What’s the difference between a sanitizer, disinfectant, and a sterilizer? The US Environmental Protection Agency Antimicrobial Pesticide Product page will clear that up for you. Their Green Cleaning Products page also lays out the basics of why cleaning chemicals can be so harmful.
CleanerSolutions Database is a free online tool for evaluating surface-cleaning products.
The Center for a New American Dream offers advice on how to change the cleaning products used by your custodial staff as well as the statistics to back it up, and they also offer reports from cities that have greened their cleaning practices.
Environmental Choice is an international organization that certifies green cleaning products and other home and office products.
The Ashkin Group advises cleaning services on greening their cleaning.
Green Seal is another standardization organization that is certifies cleaning products among other things.
Green Earth is one of the most widely available ecologically preferable drycleaning systems.
Seventh Generation’s Making a Difference Newsletter provides regular doses of sound advise.
Here’s a place to get started sourcing environmentally-friendly cleaning products. We have not personally tested all of these, so we’re eager to hear your experiences.
Cleaning Products
Clean and Green is a collaboration between British chef Antony Worrall Thompson and the WWF
No Wet waterless carwash system
At Home cleaning products by Fruits of Passion
Swheat Scoop is a biodegradable kitty litter
E-Cloth microfiber cleaning towels and mops
Method makes a stylish line of cleaning products as well as microfiber towels specialized for different surfaces.
Actor Ed Begley has an eco-friendly cleaning product worthy of the prestigious Cradle to Cradle seal of approval.
Designer Ole Jensen has crafted a dustpan and brush with nature and minimalism in mind
For cleaning dishes in a natural way, these Japanese scrubbers play rough.
Commercial/Industrial
All the Method stuff is great. And it makes the house smell awesome too.
for specific recipes for baking soda cleansers check out "baking soda bonanza" by peter a. ciullo, and if you look it up on amazon youll also see links to similiar books, on both baking soda, vinegar, possibly one on lemon juice as a cleanser, but i dont totally recall.
another tip i havent seen on here, but that works wonders (read it in a friends issue of maxim years ago, of all places) if you have a pot or pan with caked on food that wont scrub out, put a small drop of dish liquid in it along with water, bring it to a boil, and everything will slide right out when you wipe it with a sponge.
and if you have to have a scented house, soy candles scented with essential oils with cotton wicks are great stuff. an added bonus is the soy candles burn slower than their toxic counterparts.
can someone please do an article on greening the medicine cabinet? i mostly used gnc's homeopathic line, and hyland's products, but i find there are times where they just dont work as well as nyquil which is full of artificial colors and petrochemicals, or tylenol which can cause sever liver damage over time. gross. i feel like theres something i must be missing, and the ladies at my local natural food store are straight up mean, so i dont ask them.
I'd like to second what Anon. says about Method's cleaning products. They smell great, are healthy for you and the environment, and most importantly they're quite powerful, too. I use them to clean everything in my house now.
Under heading "So you want to do more", point 5 advocates using natural sponges. Natural sponges are a vital part of marine ecosystems. I see them harvested every day in the lower Florida Keys, with entire areas being denuded of these important animals. If you must use a natural sponge, please be sure it is from a cultured source (i.e., sponge farm), rather than a natural environment. And shame on Treehugger for not differentiating!
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editor note: Will update the guide. Thanks for the feedback!
You can locate Green Drycleaners using recycled CO2 at www.FindCO2.com
RE: 2 - Healthy air flow.
It kind of contradicts your "how to green your heating"
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/11/how_to_green_yo_9.php
flow is good, but plenty of energy loss in the winter or gain iin the summer if done with open windows all day long ...
We hope that those of you who have a Restore Refill Station at your local co-op or grocer are using it to refill your non-toxic cleaning products. Keeping tons of plastic out of the waste stream and cutting down on the use of water, deisel fuel, and cardboard can make a big difference. There are 23 refills stations in 6 states at this time. What a difference it would make if all co-ops and natural grocers had a Refill Station. They are so easy to use and some customers have used their same bottle for YEARS.
After reading all that I'm glad I was so lazy with my cleaning, I've mostly hand washed clothes all my life and used vinegar and baking soda just because it was cheaper. And I never use air fresheners. So I was already being green without realising it. I have never had anything dry cleaned either. Are there alternatives to washing up liquid?
Regarding #7:
I found a great alternative to the Dry Cleaner. Its a do-it-yourself dry cleaning product. I used it to refresh some sweaters I pulled out of the closet and it worked great. Dry Cleaners Secret is the name.
I was doing more research into alternative aquarium cleaning methods when I came across this article.
This is an excellent article, especially this point; "The antibacterial and antimicrobial ‘cleaners’ that many people think are necessary, especially during cold season, don’t clean hands better than soap and water, and also add to the risk of breeding “super germs,”
I have found that in the aquarium trade far too many persons also are ready to dump all sorts of antibacterials into their aquarium to help with cleaning.
I have found (being in professional maintenance) that sometimes just simple vacuuming of the aquarium environment helps with disease prevention and re-circulating devices such as an Aquarium Cleaning Machine help immensely with this task.
Have you heard of ENJO? It is simple to use, but the results are amazing. Cleaning is actually fun!
You've forgotten three of the most effective environmentally friendly cleaning products. Washing Soda and Borax and just plain soap are important product to add to your cleaning cupboard. Washing Soda is great at dissolving caked on grease on your oven and hood. Think of it kind-of like super soap. Borax is a disinfectant that breaks down in the environment and also helps dissolve grime. With these three ingredients you can even make your own extremely frugal and environmentally friendly laundry soap. If you would like more details about the environmental effects of washing soda and borax you can visit http://www.radicalfrugality.info/make-your-own-laundry-soap.html .
"Vinegar and baking soda can be used to clean almost anything. Mix in a little warm water with either of these and you’ve got yourself an all-purpose cleaner." So true, I've done it for years. Don't forget though, mix a little red food coloring with BOTH of them, and you have a volcano!
CLEAN PEACE Tip # 5: This is a superb way to not only make the house smell GOOD, it smells DELICIOUS, too! Usually in the autumn (but other seasons, also) chop up a couple of apples that may have become too pulpy for good taste, add some orange peel, a couple of cinnamon sticks and a tablespoon of whole cloves to a pan of water. About a quart and a half. Bring it to a boil. Pour it into that old fondue pot you've been saving since 1968 and light a votive candle under it. It will stay warm for hours and fill the house with wonderful fragrance.
I use ENJO, too - chemical free cleaning with just water and fiber gloves (think fluffy, thick 3-D microfibers). I've been using their gloves for almost 4 years, now, and am still using some of the original gloves I bought. Their products are truly amazing; for example, they pick up more bacteria than anti-bacterial wipes. And using ENJO has the added benefit of keeping a lot of plastic and other packaging out of the landfill (e.g., the plastic bottles that even something as benign as vinegar is sold in), in addition to keeping those unhealthy cleaning chemicals out of the environment. Their website is at enjo.net.
alternative to washing-up liquid is simple.
make a salt solution and use that!!
it really does make you wonder *what* we actually pay for when buying a bottle of washing up liquid!
I'm in the process of "going green" (little steps starting with household/personal cleaning), and I'm having a hard time deciding if Borax is really safe. I'm doing research--the MSDS on it says it is caustic (wear gloves), and toxic if swallowed--I have small children--but...Is it safe for the environment even though it could be dangerous for the body?? It seems like a major contradiction, but it is very difficult to find a home-made (and supposedly "green") cleaning recipe without it! Also, what the heck really is Washing Soda, and is IT really green?? And...are there any of you out there who use only PROVEN, TRULY GREEN products and get great cleaning results? Please share and help this woman/family GO GREEN! Thanks.
Another great 'greener' cleaning product is Soda Crystals (washing Soda) they can be used for pretty much any cleaning task around the home and are dead cheap (about 70p). They are biodegradible and contaiin no bleach, chlorine or phosphates. This site is useful for cleaning tips - www.soda-crystals.co.uk
One of my favorite cleaning methods is just to use one of those green dish scrubbers... no chemicals needed to get dirt, soap scum, etc.
Just to add to the "Underneath it all " tip, we can use baking soda as odor eliminator when cleaning carpets instead of toxic agents. For more see: http://environment-friendly.ca/index.php/baking-soda-to-the-rescue/
One overlooked aspect of cleaning green is holding onto your cleaning tools longer. Clean your toilet bowl brush, for example, by filling its container with water and dropping in one or two denture tablets. You'll produce less "cleaning tool waste" - holding onto tools longer creates less garbage, and less consumption of natural resources. There are more tips like this at my website, Cleaning-Green.Net.
Very good article!
-Stephanie
I do want to say that METHOD cleaning products did not survive closer examination.
After reading one of their bottles that says not to use in an enclosed space (i.e. do not breathe this product) I found out that they are still using "fragrance" in most of their products which is a vague term for a mixture of chemicals, sometimes up to 300 in one 'scent'! Be safe about it, make your own cleaners with baking soda and vinegar, then add essential oils for a fresh scent. The tip for baking cookies in the house is a great idea also! :)
I really like the artile on traffic i wish that people would carpool for once and stop eating so much meat and stop cuttin down trees for paper and other garbege we could use bricks in stead of wood and we could manage without paper!!!!!!!!!!!
swifter sweepers wet I was told they can damage pets livers any facts about this?
In response to:
"RE: 2 - Healthy air flow.
It kind of contradicts your "how to green your heating"
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/11/how_to_green_yo_9.php
flow is good, but plenty of energy loss in the winter or gain iin the summer if done with open windows all day long ..."
i agree - in most places you won't want to throw open the windows while scubbing the house during the winter months. but in the summer, our windows are ALWAYS open because we don't use air conditioning! I encourage more people to try doing without, or at least keeping the thermostat higher in the summer months to cut back on energy costs. sure, there are some really tough days to get through, but if you stay hydrated, set up fans to circulate the air from the cool side of your house, block the intense sun of midday, and wear light clothing...it's great! (the occasional spit bath works well, too) it also makes you feel that much closer to nature :)
p.s. we live in KY, so we do have winters as well as VERY humid and pretty hot summers...
I like using Dr. Bronners castile soaps to clean everything from clothes to dishes to kitchens to bathrooms. They are great vegan soaps that have a million and one uses. 19 bucks to clean yourself and your home for a month or two? Totally worth it.