Green Cleaners
Q: Do you have any information about the powder cleanser, Bon Ami? I’ve been using it for years and just wanted to make sure it was a safe product to continue to use.
A: I looked into the Bon Ami product – and it seems to be just fine. Looks like the company has stuck with their very simple formula over the years, avoiding unnecessary fragrances or cleaning enhancing chemicals like bleach or other things. They did add the “biodegradable cleaning agents” fairly recently. These chemicals are alkyl polyglucoside and potassium alkanoate, both of which are very popular surfactants in the green cleaning industry. As far as I know they both have good (safe) toxicity profiles. Bon Ami makes the point on their website that they listen especially to their customers with multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) – which is a good sign. If folks with MCS can tolerate Bon Ami, its got to be pretty safe! Here is their website which talks about their ingredients and their philosophy.
Q: Why are limonene and linalool so toxic? I see that they are allergens, but aren’t they natural citrus by products? What makes them so bad if I am not allergic to citrus.
A: Thanks for your question. It’s a good one. You are right – limonene and linalool are components found naturally in citrus. But they are also common allergens – and may also be sensitizers (meaning they can lead folks to become allergic or sensitive after multiple exposures). The concern with having them in products is that usually these chemicals are part of the fragrance – and on ingredient list, you’ll just see the word “fragrance” without specifying what is in that fragrance. So no one can be sure if a product contains them or not. Products containing limonene and linalool may be just fine for folks who aren’t allergic to them. We just want to see companies openly disclosing to their customers that their products contain them, so that the folks who are allergic can avoid them more easily. Hope that makes sense!
Q: Hi, I recently discovered your site, along with EWG and Good Guide. The wealth of information has been extremely eye-opening but also a little bit overwhelming. As I make the shift toward using products that have better safety ratings should I continue to use some of the products I already own that didn’t score as well? Is there an acceptable score range to consider? Also, what is the best way to discard these products without further damaging the waste stream and water supply? A friend of mine is super conscious of what she puts down the drain since she has a private septic system. Any advice on best practices would be most appreciated. I hope to host a green cleaning party and want to convey the most accurate information to my guests 
. Thank you for all your organization does!
A: Thanks for your email – these are really good questions – but not ones that are easy to answer. First of all – good for you for taking the time to assess the products you regularly use and for entertaining the idea of changing some of them. That alone is a big step towards better protecting your health – and not always an easy one for folks!
There isn’t a set acceptable score range that we can recommend. The information provided in Skin Deep and Good Guide is there for you to consider, and then to make the judgment calls that will work best for you. Everyone’s exposure is different depending on how many products they use and how often. And individuals also have different preferences on the kinds of ingredients they are looking to avoid. The extent of your concerns about limiting exposure to carcinogens, or asthmagens, or
reproductive toxins for example, will largely depend on individual situations – if you have asthma, or are planning to have children, your priorities may differ.
The best advice we can give is to look through the information as you can and when you can. We realize it can be overwhelming to think about it all at once. For most folks, its easiest to make gradual changes to products as you learn more. Changes can all be good steps in the right direction, and you have to be realistic about how you go about making those changes to make them stick.
As for your second question on discarding products – your best bet is generally to discard products in the trash rather than pouring them down the drain. While most products are designed to eventually go down the drain (this is true for cleaning products especially) they are not always designed to be poured down the drain in their straight-out-of-bottle concentration. And especially with a private septic system, you do have to be concerned about some of the chemicals in really strong cleaners.
For certain highly toxic products such as paint stripper, oven cleaners etc (which tend to have the most dire “POISON” and “DANGER” warnings on the label), your best bet is to treat those as Household Hazardous waste. Most garbage pickup companies will have some program for dealing with these wastes whether its special drop-off locations, or times during the year when these items can be collected. You can find out by contacted your waste disposal service – or by looking online at: http://earth911.com/recycling/hazardous/ and entering your hometown. When you contact them, they can tell you which kinds of products they can accept as household hazardous waste, and which ones can go out with your regular trash.
Hope this is helpful! Good luck with your green cleaning party – let us know how it goes!
Q: Is your homemade laundry detergent safe for high-efficiency front-loading washers that require a special high-efficiency detergent?
A: Thanks for your question!
Our laundry detergent recipe will work just fine in an HE clothes washer. The thing about HE washers is that because they use so much less water than regular washing machines, they have trouble handling regular laundry detergents which include foaming or sudsing agents. Our laundry detergent contains washing soda, borax and soap flakes, none of which include the sudsing chemicals which are added to regular detergent. So it cleans laundry well – without all the foam that can damage HE washers.
Here’s the recipe from our website. Note that you can adjust the recipe based on the hardness or softness of your water!
Laundry Detergent
1 cup soap flakes
1/2 cup washing soda
1/2 cup Borax
Soap flakes can be made by grating your favorite pure vegetable soap with a cheese grater. Mix ingredients together and store in a glass container. Use 1 tablespoon per load (2 for heavily soiled laundry), wash in warm or cold water.
This standard recipe can be adjusted for soft water by using 1 cup soap flakes, 1/4 cup washing soda and 1/2 cup borax. For hard water, use 1 cup soap flakes, 1 cup washing soda, and 1 cup borax.
Q: I love the advice on your website. I am trying to move to greener cleaning supplies for my daughters’ preschool. A huge concern that staff & parents have is regarding the H1N1 virus. What cleaners would your organization recommend for general surfaces and hand washing? We have been told by school staff that the cleaners must be a tuberculosis-cide etc. and say that on the bottle. Tips? Does vinegar, water, baking soda do the trick for surfaces & kill viruses like H1N1? Thank you.
A: Thanks for your question! It’s great to hear that you are trying to switch your child’s preschool to greener cleaners! Such a worthwhile effort for children’s health!
While our research generally deals with household cleaners (as opposed to industrial or institutional cleaners) we can at least give you some leads on who else to contact for more information.
The Healthy Schools Network is one resource you can try. They have a lot of materials on green cleaning in schools and can provide information on experiences by schools that have made the switch to green cleaners. Here is a link to their “Cleaning for Healthy School Toolkit”
http://www.cleaningforhealthyschools.org/
As far as products for handwashing – the very best thing to use is regular soap and water. (The trick of course is getting the preschoolers to wash their hands regularly!)
For products to use on surfaces, it’s worth thinking carefully about which crtitical surfaces at the school really need to be disinfected (i.e. those that get touched often or have food contact), and which can simply be cleaned with regular non disinfectant cleaners. Making these key decisions can both save money and reduce exposure to harsher chemicals.
For the areas where you decide you do need disinfectants, and specifically one’s registered to affect tuberculosis or influenza, you can look at the lists that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) puts together. I have included links to the EPA’s lists of cleaners that are effective against tuberculosis and Influenza A. (if they are on
these lists, they will say so on the label of the product.) Note – most of the cleaners on these lists are not green cleaners. But if you look carefully through the list, you can find some products with safer active ingredients. Ingredients you might look for include: hydrogen peroxide, citric acid, or thymol (thyme oil). As a policy, WVE doesn’t recommend or endorse any specific products however, so I don’t have any advice on which ones might be better than others for cleaning.
Q: Will homemade cleaners work on marble? What precautions do I need to take to make sure I don’t damage these surfaces?
A: Marble is a beautiful stone, but it does need special care, because it is relatively soft. Our all-purpose cleaner recipe is NOT to be used with marble, because the vinegar in our recipe is too acidic, and could damage the surface. Instead, hot water (with a little soap) will usually do the trick if you maintain your marble regularly. If your marble surface gets a stain that doesn’t wash off with water, the best thing to do is to make a poultice to help remove it. Here is a website with directions on how to create a poultice to draw a stain out of the marble.
How to remove a stain from marble with a poultice:
http://www.natural-stone.com/stainremoval.html
Q: Looking for answers to questions like these:
+Does vinegar really clean well?
+What is borax?
Check out our FAQ’s on Green Cleaning
Q: I am curious if you have any suggestions for getting tree sap of a pair of black pants. Thank you.
A: Thanks for your question. Tree sap is an annoying substance to get out of clothing! As you may have tried, simply laundering your clothes doesn’t usually do the trick, as its really sticky stuff!
While there are several commercial brands of cleaners designed to help get rid of sticky stains, I’m assuming you are looking for a more natural solution.
Basically there are two ways of getting rid of tree sap. One way is to use a solvent which can dissolve the tree sap. Something as simple as rubbing alcohol can do this. You may see recommendations of using hand sanitizer – this can work too – mostly because most hand sanitizers have alcohol as their active ingredient! (And it may be a product you are more likely to have on hand if you are away from home.)
The other way of getting rid of tree sap is to use some kind of oil which can soften the tree sap, and make it easier to remove. I’ve heard of success using either peanut butter or mayonnaise. Depending on the fabric however, you want to be careful not to leave a new stain from the oils!
You can also combine the two techniques for particularly difficult stains (use oil to soften it up, and alcohol to dissolve the rest off.) With either (or both) techniques you’ll want to follow up by laundering the clothing with your regular detergent,
As a disclaimer, I have to tell you, we at WVE haven’t done any substantial real-world field testing of these tricks ourselves, we just haven’t had the capacity to try them out on the many different kinds of stains out there. But we love to hear from folks who try them as to how they fared! So let us know how it goes!
