Green Cleaning: It’s Not That Easy
Most people base their purchasing decisions on time and money, but some take it one step further--they put their money where their values are.
Those contemplating “going green” in celebration of Earth Day’s 30-year anniversary Saturday may find it difficult when it comes to housecleaning products. It is hard to tell what products are truly Earth-friendly--not just marketed as such--and which work, because few green products are rated.
Reading the labels may provide some clues, but the government does not require manufacturers to list all their ingredients. When lists of ingredients are provided, they are often filled with scientific terms that are indecipherable to the average consumer.
Green products are also more expensive--sometimes double the cost of conventional, nationally advertised brands--because they include natural ingredients such as citrus, soybeans and essential oils instead of cheaper chemicals like chlorine.
The best you can do is buy a few, test them at home and assess the results for yourself.
Finding green cleaning products may not be easy. While there are more of them on the market today than there were 10 years ago, they account for a minuscule part of the market for all house cleaners. They lack the marketing muscle of nationally advertised, name-brand items, and their distribution is not widespread. That is why most grocery store chains carry few, if any, green products.
Americans, for example, spent $4.6 billion on conventional laundry detergents alone in 1999. The industry’s bestseller--Tide powder laundry detergent--accounted for $717 million of those sales. By comparison, sales of the bestselling, comparable green product--Planet powder laundry detergent--was $645,000, less than one-tenth of 1% of the bestselling version of Tide.
While each of the three major chains in Southern California--Albertson’s, Ralph’s and Vons--carry most, if not all, of Tide’s 12 formulas, they stock only one green detergent, and that is Planet. Spokespeople for Vons and Ralph’s each said the stores’ decisions are based on consumer demand for such products, which is still relatively low.
“Consumers are overwhelmed with things to worry about . . . from violence in schools to unemployment,” says Stephen Ashkin, director of product development and environmental affairs for Vermont-based Seventh Generation, an Earth-friendly manufacturer. “. . . People have so many issues to deal with in their lives, it’s hard for them to say, ‘OK, now I’m going to deal with the environmental impact of the products I buy.’ ”
Consumer perception that green products take longer to work and even then may be less effective has been a major stumbling block.
“They don’t work as good,” said Mark Newman-Kuzel, owner of the L.A.-based cleaning service Maid in the USA. “We prefer the hard-core stuff with the bleach. . . . They work better.”
Makers of green cleaners, of course, disagree.
“I’ll put my product up against Tide any day,” said Jim Rimer, a chemist who, 15 years ago, founded Bi-O-Kleen, which produces a variety of all-natural cleansers in Portland, Ore.
But Bi-O-Kleen was not included in the February issue of Consumer Reports magazine, which studied the effectiveness of various laundry detergents. Because the magazine bases its tests on percentage of market share and distribution, only one green product was included in its tests--Ecover Ultra Natural. It scored last in both price and performance out of the 39 detergents tested. Tide’s Bleach Alternative Clean Rinse Formula scored first, with an average per-load cost of 26 cents, whereas Ecover cost 38 cents.
Rimer has no problem with the price of his products, which average a whopping $7 an ounce for his concentrated kitchen, bath and laundry cleansers.
“They [consumers] pay $3.50 for a pint of ice cream because it’s really good,” he said. “I think we follow that same philosophy. People are willing to pay the price for a good product.”
Consumers ultimately make that judgment.
“When I look at a package or container, the first thing I do is look at the list of ingredients,” said Heloise, the internationally syndicated newspaper columnist known for her DIY home remedies. She suggests people examine labels when making their decisions. On some green products, she said, “if you read the label, it’s baking soda and water. It’s vinegar with soap. Or it’s citrus. . . . Why would I tell people to go buy your product when I can tell people how to make it at home themselves?”
The scientific names listed on green labels may throw you off, but most consumers are already familiar with some of the ingredients, like rubbing alcohol (isopropyl alcohol). Heloise advocates using baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) and vinegar (acetic acid) to clean and deodorize. For laundry, she recommends using hydrogen peroxide instead of chlorine bleach.
“It’s not as strong as chlorine bleach, [and] it acts slower,” she said.
Chlorine bleach is effective on a stain within 10 minutes of its application, Heloise said. Hydrogen peroxide can take up to 24 hours to yield results. Even then, it may not get clothes as white as one would like.
“I’ve sort of given up on white. Ecru, cream, all those colors, I like them better anyway, and they’re just easier,” said Julia Russell, founder of the L.A.-based Eco-Home Network, an organization that educates people about home environmental issues.
In today’s quick-fix society, most consumers are interested in the bottom line. They want a product that is quick, easy and effective. Chemically charged name brands do the trick.
Many of the more mainstream cleansers consumers use on a daily basis include toxic chemicals. Chlorine, for example, is regularly used in laundry detergents as well as kitchen and bathroom cleaners.
“Most of these products affect the quality of indoor air, which eventually gets outdoors and leads to smog formation,” said Jim Darr, a chemist in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics.
While toxic chemicals deplete the ozone layer and affect aquatic life, Darr said an even greater impact is on human health.
“If people are using things that are highly acidic or highly alkaline or have a strong concentration of an oxidizer, like bleach, one of the main things is the potential for skin and eye irritation or tissue damage or respiratory irritation,” Darr said.
Janet Donohue, spokeswoman for the New York-based Soap and Detergent Assn., which represents manufacturers like Unilever, Clorox, Procter & Gamble and Amway but no Earth-friendly companies, said there haven’t been problems identified with such products.
“Their ingredients are biodegradable,” she said.
But just because a product says it’s biodegradable doesn’t mean it isn’t damaging to the environment.
“Plutonium is biodegradable--in a span of a few thousand years,” said Karyn Siegel-Maier, author of the Naturally Clean Home (Storey Books, 1999, $12.95). “People think because a product is on the market, it must be OK to use, and that’s really not the case.”
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Susan Carpenter can be reached at susan.carpenter@latimes.com.
