Enviromental Care

Sure we all know enough to not to digest cleaning products and to keep it away from children and our food, but there are many ways harmful toxins from regular cleaning products can still end up effecting you.

It begins with the disposal of these products. Like most people, you probably throw away a spray bottle once there is not enough fluid left to get a full spray and throw away powders without checking to see how much is really left. These disposed products contain thousands of untested chemicals that you have now unintentionally put into the environment. 

With the exception of laundry detergent, most common cleaning products have many non-biodegradable chemicals that over time end up in streams, rivers and who knows where else. These chemicals come in contact with marine life of all sorts whether it be the plant that a fish eats or the fish that you eat. Not to mention the effects of these chemical when in contact with your skin has been proven to cause cancer and birth defects.

Packaging of many cleaning products has improved over the years in part due to the Montreal Protocol. However not all of this packaging is biodegradable even today and some of it can not be recycled and take a heavy toll on our planets health. For example: Aerosol cans still contain propellant gases which have chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that are proven to harm the ozone layer.

Bottom line is that we are killing ourselves and our planet by not using Green Cleaning Products. Even if one would be lucky enough to never be effected by the negative effects, can you use these products knowing that they will effect someone else?

Reference: http://www.greenchoices.org/green-living/cleaning/environmental-impacts

Green Cleaning Tips: Laundry

Washers and dryers use lots of energy and water to get our cloths nice and clean. 

However, doing laundry consumes a great amount of water and energy. Here are some steps you can take to minimize the impact that cleaning your cloths can do to the environment. These tips may help you save some money. Going green helps you save more green!!

• Try using an environmentally friendly laundry detergent.

There are many things that can make a better for the environment. Buying a concentrated detergents helps benefit the environment because it takes less resources to create these products. Also, try finding a laundry detergent that does not use harmful chemicals like Alkylphenol ethoxylates or APE. Exposure to APEs can hurt your immune system. 

• Use cold water when washing your clothes.

Heating up the water for the accounts for 90% of the energy that a washer uses. By using cold water cuts down the energy needed to clean your cloths. Manufactures of laundry detergent offer cold water activated laundry detergent. Using this will help you reduce your energy costs. 

• Wear the same pair of clothing many times. 

If you wear clothes more then once you will have less cloths to clean. Since you are cleaning less clothes you are consuming less resources. However, somethings like underwear you should wear only once. 

• Use of front loading washing machine.

Newer washing machine are more efficient then their top loading cousins. According to Energy Star, older washing machines use 30-35 gallons of water per load. However, newer washing machines use 10-15 gallons of water per load. Newer washing machines use around a third of the water it takes to complete a load. Treehugger.com says that an average family dose over 400 loads of laundry a year. If a 30 gallon washing machine does 400 loads at 30 gallons per load then the and efficient washing machine use 12,000 gallons per year. If you use a washing machine that uses 10 gallon per load and you do 400 loads of laundry you will only use 4,000 gallons of water per year. Just by switching machines you will save 8,000 gallons of water per year! 

• Air dry your clothes

If you don't use your dryer then you wont use any energy. Using the power of the sun you can dry your cloths for no cost. When you use the sun to dry your clothes they also last longer. When clothes are drying in the dryer they are moving and that causes them to wear out faster. Since your clothes aren’t moving when they’re being air dried they will last longer.

Tips and Data come from Treehugger.com

http://www.treehugger.com/htgg/how-to-go-green-laundry.html#reading

Alternatives Products

Everyone loves a clean home.  In order to keep our home clean we often use 10 or more different cleaning products.  Some are for the kitchen, others are used in the bathroom and some are for cleaning the carpet.  Most people do not care what is in the product they are using as long as it gets the job done.  Most of the cleaning products that we keep in our homes “clean” actually have harmful chemicals in them.

The following numbers were released in the 2009 Poison Control Report, from the American Association of Poison Control Centers about the phone calls they receive that year.  Some of the statistics on the right and below are a few stats that stood out to me about household cleaning products. 

·       4,280,391 phone calls received in 2009

·       91.19% of all human poison exposures occurred in the home

·       212,616 phone calls or 7.4% of all calls were about household cleaning products

·       For those ages 0-5, 125,392 phone calls or 9.34% of phone calls were about household cleaning products.

Seeing that cleaning products are so prevalent in our homes and in our lives, one would think that we all should be more aware about what we are bringing into our homes. 

So the questions now becomes what steps can I take to avoid these toxins?  One easy way, is to check the product to see if the cleaning products you are buying are “Green” meaning the product are ecofriendly and is not made without harmful chemicals.  There are several companies that one can turn and know that the products that sell will not be toxic to us.

Some include:

·    

         Simple Green

·       7^th Generation

·       Green Concepts

·       Clorox Green Works

     

     So next time your looking for cleaning products be sure to make sure they have a green or ecofriendly label because you never know what toxins you might be bringing into your home.

Toxins in the Home

Cleaning Products can be dangerous for the family and nauseating for pregnant women. In 2000, cleaning products were responsible for nearly 10% of all toxic exposures reported to U.S. Poison Control Centers, accounting for 206,636 calls. Of these, 120,434 exposures involved children under six, who can swallow or spill cleaners stored or left open inside the home. (http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_279.cfm) 

These products can cause indoor pollution as well as be extremely harmful even fatal if they are in the hand of children that do not know there dangers. Here are a couple examples Ammonia: is a very volatile chemical and is very damaging to your eyes, respiratory tract and skin. Antibacterial Cleaners:  may contain triclosan, which is absorbed through the skin and can be tied to liver damage (http://www.mamashealth.com/doc/cleanprod.asp). Other chemicals such as bleach and Chlorine found in cleaning products can be extremely harmful as well.  

The question to ask yourself is after knowing this information how do you feel about harmful cleaning products in your home?