Up-to-Date Ecology

In the last couple of decades, people have become more conscious of their affect on the planet. We started to be more interested in topics like ecology and what damages we do to the surrounding world. To have as little negative affect to the nature as possible, has become more important than ever.

The topic of ecology has come to our homes bringing second thoughts about the cleaning materials we use. Some of the products we used to think are harmless, are now proven to be dangerous. As they go down the sewer or in the ground, they disturb the natural ecosystem.

It is not about just the rain-forests anymore. The subject-matter is wide-ranged. We try our hardest no only to repair the damages done by previous generations, but to prevent any of them in the future as well.

Nothing is lost, it just changes locations. Be sure, those chemicals are as bad for the fish and plants, as they are for you. If we know how the cycle of water works, we can easily see that the dangerous chemicals are back home.

Are We Really Insignificant?

People often get discouraged, as they feel insignificant compared to the nature as a whole. But we should all remember that big changes happen with one step (person, household) at a time. We shouldn’t wait for others to change. We should take care of us first and set a good example to everybody else. If your own life and household are chaos, why would others follow you? It is important to take care of our household and to make good decisions.

The number of bad things we should watch out for seems to be growing. People could get lost where to begin. This article will try to cover the topic of domestic cleaning and give you simple steps and examples.

The first step is being aware that mass production is in fact ‘mass’ because consumers buy the stuff. Think about it this way – with every choice you make, for every product you buy, you claim what world you want to live in. If you buy products with heavy, harmful chemicals or made by industries that exploit their workers, it’s like thumbs up for it. As you invest in it, you give it green light.

Have this in mind, you can now start to apply it in your everyday life – from grocery shopping to what kind of paint you use for your house.

The second step is to think about which items are made for only one use, or the so-called disposable items, like wet wipes for example. Why do you have to spend who-knows-how-much dollars on something that you use only one time? And then it, believe it or not, it actually doesn’t disappear in thin air! It builds up in the nature and it definitely can’t be called eco-friendly. Statistics show that more harm is done now than previous years. By something seemingly not harmful like wet-wipes! So it’s unthinkable to use things like this daily in our households. We can at least try to cut down the usage.

The next topic is about the chemicals in the domestic cleaning products. You can hear more and more often people discuss whether something is “toxic” or “toxin-free” and wonder if the first is a real threat to us. You can hear the answer “yes” almost every time.

The Bad

Some of them (actually a great deal of them) are labelled as dangerous to the environment picturing a real wasteland – with a dead fish and a dead tree. How direct and sincere of them. But what about product by companies, that are not so truthful. Thanks to laws and policies industries are not obligated to list all of the ingredients on the label of their product if there is very little of the toxins in it. But what about combining cleaning items? How can we be sure that the toxic chemicals do not build up? Even those that are labelled as “toxic-free” and “green” can be misleading. Watch out for phonies, who use “eco” or words like this only to decorate their label. They should be certified, not just state it freely. People can start feeling discouraged as they seemingly cannot be sure about the trustworthiness of anything. Search for certifications on the package.

Chemical-Free Solutions

But do we really need to use chemical-based products that much?

There are eco-friendly domestic cleaning methods. Like using the good old scraper, combined it with purified water – for windows. Steam treatment technique – for carpets. Pressure cleaning – for walls. The later is effective even if the surface has graffiti on it. Those are maybe the best ways to do domestic (and corporate for that matter) cleaning.

Things like the water-fed poles are quite expensive, the hot water extraction machines and the jet washing equipment too. They are respectively used for washing windows, washing carpets and washing walls. But lucky for you, there are professionals that do it for a living. So you don’t have to buy the whole equipment just to be thoughtful for your actions. If you are looking for service that does cleaning here’s a list for what you should be looking for:

• Environmental Policy
• Energy Saving processes
• Responsible products
• Low energy usage equipment
• Recycling policy

You should be also extra careful when using chemicals if you’re pregnant, have a child or a pet. Once again – it’s the choices you make that form the surrounding world. Even if we don’t want to, we do have effect on the world. Why don’t we turn that into something positive and actually be the change we want to see?