Cleaning
Ecover
Environmentally Friendly Cleaning
Products
The
most widely available range of environmentally friendly cleaning
products are Ecover.
These are available at most supermarkets and some smaller
independent shops (usually health food stores) even have a refill
facility where you can take your empty containers and refill it saving
both landfill and your pocket. More details of their products and
where you can buy them (and their refill service) can found on their
website here: Ecover.
Homemade
Cleaning
Fluid
My
wife has made her own cleaning fluid for cleaning kitchen surfaces and
it is fab. It works a treat and is excellent at cleaning as
well as removing the lime scale from kitchen sinks/draining boards. It
is basically water, a slosh of vinegar and a couple drops of washing up
liquid (Ecover of course!).
new Cleaning Clothes
We use 100% natural (cellulose) sponge clothes from Waitrose, they are
sold as Thick Sponge Wipes. Being a natural material they will
bio-degrade. They also wash really well so can be reused many times.
Apparently Lakeland do bamboo ones which are even better for the
environment as they are not dyed and bamboo is a far more sustainable
crop but we have not tried these.
Dusting
Why
use a furniture polish which is full of chemicals when a damp cloth
will do just
as a good job? If you want to nourish or treat woodwork then
it
can be waxed with natural furniture wax or oils such as bees wax which
do not use harmful chemicals.
Steam
Cleaners
Steam
cleaners are like big kettles with a hose that squirts steam and you
can fit different attachments to the end. It is like a
wallpaper steamer stripper but smaller and with cleaning attachments!
They cost about £80 so we borrowed one from a
friend
before buying one. They really do work and are great for
cleaning
most things, especially bathroom and kitchen areas without any
chemicals. I suppose you have to weigh up the use of
electricity
v chemicals. Which is more environmentally friendly? I imagine
the electricity, especially if you use a green energy provider (see the Utility section).
