Our cleaning cabinets can contain a laundry list of toxic chemicals and heaps of single-use plastic.
“Most cleaning products are used fleetingly, then washed away down the plughole,” says Anna Turns, environmental journalist and author of Go Toxic Free. “Many toxic ingredients won’t easily degrade,” and once in the sea, they can “accumulate inside plants and animals” and “harm and disrupt hormone function of wildlife and of us”. The manufacture of these ingredients also has an “environmental cost”, she says. So simply using less of any cleaning product is one of the best things we can do, advises Francesca Ginley, chemicals expert at Marine Conservation Society.
Turns notes common culprits are bleach, chemicals in synthetic fragrances, VOCs (volatile organic compounds causing air pollution) and phosphates. Bleach, for example, is “toxic to aquatic life and harmful when we breathe it in during use”, but it’s not necessary, as “we don’t live in a sterile environment”.
In light of this, I’ve tested non-toxic and natural cleaning products to see which ones perform the best. For insights from experts on what ‘natural’ actually means, and greenwashing flags to be aware of, scroll down to the bottom of this review.
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