How to Make Your Home Cleaning Routine More Eco-Friendly
Before we examine our options for cleaning supplies in the market, I want to first acknowledge the landscape we face of loosely regulated ingredient disclosure standards for cleaning supplies. We would hope that cleaning supply manufacturers would have our best interest at heart, but ultimately the profit comes first before our concerns. The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act has given chemical supply companies the ability to skirt accountability and transparency when labeling the ingredients used to create their cleaning products. This is accomplished through the requirement of only listing active disinfectants and potentially harmful chemicals. As Scientific American and Sloan Barnett point out, under this act the EPA “can’t require chemical companies to prove the safety of their products unless the agency itself can show that the product poses a health risk — which the EPA does not have the resources to do since, according to one estimate, it receives some two thousand new applications for approval every year.” Although this statement was published in 2011, the act is still enforced and its impact is still minimal. EPA has since released Safer Choice and Design for the Environment Pesticides, both of which are certification processes that examine and test the validity of business claims on “green” practices for their cleaning products. However, these have to be submitted as applications from the manufacturers. Long story short, the lack of testing and regulation from our government and the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal agency, enables manufacturers to absolve themselves and therefore inadvertently cause harm to us and the environment for the sake of a free market and competition. As consumers, we have a right to know what we are buying and its unforeseen consequences. Most importantly, we also have a right as human beings to be treated as such and have our lives and our environment protected from harm.
For more information:
https://www.ewg.org/guides/cleaners/content/weak_regulation/
Here are a few ways you can change the cleaning supplies you buy:
For the Kitchen
There’s a variety of surfaces and objects we need to clean in the kitchen that can emit harmful chemicals in the air and cause harm to our bodies through contact, inhalation, and accidental ingestion. It’s important that we pick the right products that protect us and don’t leave our environment in disarray during their end of life. We can mitigate this in a few simple ways: minimizing the use of paper towels, relying on cloths that have antibacterial properties like E-Cloths or Norwex, and choosing Safer Choice and fragrance-free cleaning supplies.
E-Cloths and Norwex Cloths are for cleaning up everyday messes. For deeper cleans, use green-certified cleaners (that are actually green and take your health into consideration). Green-certified cleaners will have a Safer Choice label from the EPA. They will typically disclose ingredients that are easy to read too — no long convoluted names to cloud your brain!
For the Bathroom
The bathroom requires a deep clean but that doesn’t mean you have to rely on harsh chemicals to get the job done! Look for the Safer Choice label from the EPA when buying bathroom cleaners.
You can also check here:
https://www.epa.gov/saferchoice/products#a04t0000005MBGyAAO
Other Recommendations
- For cleaning the floor, try reusable mop pads to replace the traditional Swiffer wet and dry wipes. To make the cleaning solution, simply mix 1–2 tablespoons of liquid dish soap into a bucket of water. This will work on almost any surface and make it shiny and clean without too much of a hassle.
- What to do with vacuum and dustpan gunk? You can compost it! As long as the debris isn’t from synthetic rugs or pieces of plastic. Remember that the debris must contain organic materials like pet and human hair, dust, plant leaves, etc.
Although we face a daunting marketplace with a plethora of options and considerations, labels like Safer Choice from the EPA make up for the Toxic Substances Control Act’s flaws. This label, and participating manufacturers, provide us some direction while we navigate what works for us and doesn’t harm the environment in the process. I hope these additional recommendations above provide some further direction for other cleaning situations that leave you wondering if there is an eco-friendly alternative.
Until next time.
Happy Cleaning!
I would love to hear from you. What stood out to you from this article? Anything you already knew? Methods/cleaning supplies you have taken on for yourself already? Feel free to comment below or write to me via email at rerecyclechi@gmail.com.
