Great Green Idea: Green Cleaning: Extend Your Care for the Planet and Home with Environmentally Friendly Cleaning Products

Extend Your Care for the Planet and Home with Environmentally Friendly Cleaning Products

As more and more of us are feeling a growing concern to do something to help neutralize the impact we have on the environment, it is becoming easier to go green all the while. The marketplace is listening to people's demands for more products made from organic, natural, and sustainable ingredients that will not harm our environment. Now, one can run their home off renewable energy, build their homes sustainably, dress and eat in an environmentally friendly manner, and now we can even extend our "greenness" to the products we use to clean our homes.

In recent years we have been learning that the chemicals used in many major cleaning products are not only harmful to the planet, but they have the potential to be harmful to our families' health as well. These products are made with industrial strength, harsh chemical cleansers that truly are not necessary to clean the modest messes we face in our home. Even for those tougher clean-up jobs, there is no need to use potentially dangerous, toxic chemicals when alternatives are available.

When going green, it is easy to overlook some of these less obvious ways in which our daily habits contribute to the degradation of our environment. Simply look on the ingredients label of any common cleaning product and a clearer picture begins to emerge. The list of ingredients contains incomprehensible terms that belie the obvious problem - if we cannot even pronounce the ingredients in these products, how can we ensure they are safe to use around our families? The answer is, you can't, and a lot of these chemicals have proven to be toxic to children and adults in concentrated doses. And they most definitely harm the environment when they are disposed of improperly, which is an all too common phenomena.

Companies like SC Johnson are starting to take the environmental movement into consideration and have reformulated their cleaning products to be less toxic and reduce the harm they cause to the surrounding environment. These are wonderful steps in the right direction.

However, in addition to major efforts such as the one stated above, there is already a large market of different brands of cleaning products that are comprised of natural, organic, and environmental and human friendly ingredients. Many of the ingredients lists read like a trip through the produce aisle. The ingredients are easily identifiable and are harmless to the person doing the cleaning and the environment.

These products work on the knowledge our grandparents and great-grandparents already knew - that natural ingredients can do just as good a job, if not better, than harsh chemical compounds with names we cannot begin to decipher. Companies such as Mrs. Meyers produce an entire line of all natural cleaning products from bathroom cleaners, to laundry detergents, and even room fresheners. These products are made from 100% natural ingredients derived from organic sources wherever possible. Niche brands like these no longer cost an arm and a leg to purchase. As time marches on, these eco-friendly cleaning products are becoming more affordable to the everyday consumer.

We all want to do our part to improve the status of the environment and to ensure the health of our families. We can take our efforts to "go green" one step further by using natural, non-toxic, harmless cleaning products to keep our homes looking spic and span, and reduce the amount of toxic chemicals we expose ourselves to and introduce into the environment. With the variety of options for a number of different budget sizes, it has never been easier to go green, all the while keeping our homes squeaky clean.