Green Cleaning Products: Buy Them In The Store, Make Them At Home

By Michael Cravens

Next time you pull out your rubber gloves and bucket of cleaning supplies, take a second and look at the labels on the bottles.

Do you see a list of ingredients? In most cases, the answer is no. And if there is a list, it's a very limited one.

That's because the companies that make these products are widely unregulated by the government. They're not required to list the ingredients in their products and many of the cleaning products on the market contain a wide array of harmful chemicals. 

Chemicals like bleach, chlorine, and phosphates can cause environmental and health problems over time. Especially when you breath in and rub into eating surfaces.

Green In The Store
There’s been a huge push in the cleaning products industry over the past few years to "go green." New companies like Seventh Generation, Simple Green and Better Life now offer consumers the choice of cleaning products free of harmful, toxic chemicals.

But green cleaning products come with their negatives as well as their positives.

The Upside of Green

• Green products clean and sanitize just as well as products containing harsher chemicals. You’ve probably heard the hype that antibacterial soaps and cleaners are breeding a new generation of "super germs." Though the evidence in support of this is inconclusive, why use cleaners with unnecessary ingredients if you don’t have to?

According to the Center For Disease Control And Prevention, "Antibacterial-containing products have not been proven to prevent the spread of infection better than products that do not contain antibacterial chemicals." Meaning that your kitchen counters are just as sanitary whether your cleaner has antibacterial ingredients or not.

• Green products are better for you and the environment. Chemicals commonly found cleaners have been linked to a variety of health concerns, including asthma in children and cancers. Additionally, the chemical phosphate (found in detergents) has been proven to cause excess algae growth in oceans and rives.

The Downside of Green

• Green products are usually more expensive, sometimes costing up to twice as much as their not-so-eco-friendly counterparts.

• Green products require extra elbow grease. Because they don’t contain the chemicals like bleach, it takes a little extra scrubbing on your part to achieve the same level of "visual cleanliness."

• Green products are harder to find. Most supermarkets don’t carry a wide selection of green cleaning products. Which means you may have to go to a specialty store to find the products you’re looking for. (As a side note, one convenient solution to the "hard to find" problem is a website called Alice.com. Alice sells thousands of household essentials online, and you can narrow your search using their lifestyle filter for green/organic products only. )

Green At Home
Another alternative to harmful chemical and costly green cleaners are solutions you make at home. You can clean just about any surface using a mixture of white distilled vinegar, baking soda and water. And these ingredients are 100% natural and safe for you and the environment.

MSN’s lifestyle section features a fantastic article that shows you how to use combinations of common household items likes lemons, cooking oils, toothpaste, salt and more to clean everything from wicker furniture to you fine china. There are too many to list here, so check out the full article for all the recipes.

Green at Sitters.com
Sitters.com includes listings for people looking for housekeeping jobs. Many of these service providers will supply their own green cleaning supplies!