Celebrities, stores take a shine to green cleaners

The growing popularity of cleaning products that are -- or claim to be -- Earth-friendly is part of a larger trend, a wave of environmentalism that’s been sweeping the country since Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” focused popular attention on the threat of global climate change.

Just a few short years ago, so-called Earth-friendly items were largely the domain of specialty and health food stores. Today, even major retailers such as Wal-Mart, Home Depot and Target are selling organic towels and linens, reusable shopping bags, recycled garden hoses, solar yard lights, all-natural cosmetics and, of course, green household cleaners.

The cleaning products in particular were, until recently, made mostly by small companies, sold in few outlets, and saddled with a reputation for ineffectiveness -- a characterization that doesn’t apply to the current generation of products, says Brian Sansoni, vice president of communications for the Soap and Detergent Assn. Today’s eco-friendly cleaners are widely available; some even boast hip packaging (see, for example, Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day and Method products).

Celebrities are pushing them too.

* “Healthy Child Healthy World,” a new book from the Los Angeles-based advocacy group of the same name, written by Christopher Gavigan, the group’s chief executive -- with an introduction by Meryl Streep and advice from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow, Sheryl Crow and Tom Hanks -- urges parents to forgo chlorine bleach and ammonia for hydrogen peroxide and hot water as one of many steps to “creating a cleaner, greener, safer home.”

* Actor Ed Begley markets his own line of “environment friendly” plant-based cleaners -- Begley’s Best -- guaranteed to biodegrade in a week or less.

* And the Greening the Cleaning product line developed by Deirdre Imus, wife of radio jock Don Imus, contains corn- and palm oil-based cleaning agents, all clearly listed on the label. Imus and her husband founded a ranch for children with cancer as well as a pediatric oncology research center at Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. Her concern that children with cancer were being exposed to potentially harmful chemicals in hospitals prompted her to create her line of cleaners. The Hackensack medical center is one of several healthcare facilities in the Northeast using her products.