Evolution of Green Cleaning Products

Environmental science has come a long way over the last few years. Many advancements have been made in many different areas of the "green economy." This includes advancements in the green cleaning product industry. It is interesting though to take a look at the evolution of the cleaning product industry. For many years, people used just water to clean. Soaps were discovered and later developed into an established craft in Europe by the seventh century. These soaps were all manufactured using natural ingredients such as olive oil. This natural chemistry stayed the same until 1916, when the first synthetic detergent was developed in Germany. These products were "synthesized" from a variety of raw materials. Ever since this time in history, there have been many cleaning product manufacturers all creating their own proprietary cleaning concoctions (cleaning product manufacturers are not required to list ingredients on the labels). These companies have used products that have no toxicity, but many have used ingredients that are toxic to a human being when exposed over a longer period of time. These products are also very slow to biodegrade and have contributed to the pollution of our environment. It seems that these manufacturers only started looking at how well the products cleaned and how cheap they could make them for. They didn't take into account the risks of chronic chemical exposure or the impact these substances could have on our environment. These manufacturing practices continued on through the rest of the century.

Today it seems that everyone is "going green." Some of these companies may be doing it for the right reasons (safer, better for environment, etc.) and some are surely doing it only to profit. The fact is, these major cleaning product manufacturers are offering a green alternative to their regular line more and more. Our society is progressing towards the idea of environmental protection and of course the protection of our own health from exposure to toxic chemicals we once thought were harmless. This has spurred the huge increase in green products, including the eco-friendly cleaning products offered in stores today. The funny thing about all of this is that these cleaning manufacturers have simply digressed back to the earlier days of cleaners and have formulated recipes of natural, plant-based, non-toxic cleaners. So after the decades of research and manufacturing to create a cleaner that really cleans, the major manufacturers have actually gone back to square one.

Many people have the misconception that natural cleaning products are not effective. I own a cleaning company and can tell you first hand that this is absolutely not the case. There are different products with different ingredients that should be used for those specific tasks and thus will function just as well as a comparable chemical product, without the hazard. I have seen ads for the new green cleaning line offered by Scrubbing Bubbles and they claim their green product works just as well as the traditional one. So even the traditional companies are now claiming that green cleaners do in fact work! The only question now that these companies are putting money into green cleaning is, what will be the next big breakthrough in green cleaning technology?

 

 

Source: Soap and Detergent Association (cleaning101.com)