"Clean Green"

By Darrel R.
Green Office Store.com's Associate Content Editor
September 1, 2007

Are you wearing your oxygen mask when you clean your yard and house? If not, you might want to consider switching to green products for your house and yard sanitation needs.

If you use degreasers, stain removers and standard detergents to clean your clothes, dishes and bathroom, you’ve made your home into a small chemical plant! And using pesticides on your lawn and garden can harm the environment as much as they help your plants and grass. These chemicals contaminate groundwater and our lakes and streams. And if you breathe in or, worse, ingest some of these chemicals, you can get sick months or years later and not realize that you’re ill because you came in contact with these hazards.

Phosphates in laundry detergent alone can kill fish, wildlife and plants in rivers and streams over weeks or months after they’ve been washed away. If you drive or walk by large masses of algae in ponds or streams, chances are pretty decent they’ve been caused by pollutants like laundry detergent and other household and yard chemicals.

You can combat these problems of hazardous cleaning products by cleaning your office and home green. You can clean with environmentally-friendly cleaning solutions that won’t hurt the fish and plants in our rivers and streams and by changing your bathrooms into places where you can save money on water, paper and energy in the process.

GreenSeal offers multiple products to clean everything from your bathroom to your windows to your walls and floors. The Enviro Care Washroom Cleaner takes care of your soap scum and any mineral deposits that not only are havens for bacteria but are unsightly. At the same time, this solution doesn’t hurt the environment when it is flushed away through your drainage pipes.

The Enviro Glass Cleaner works just like other types of glass cleaners to clean mirrors, formica and other polished materials and doesn’t use alcohol or leave streaks. The Enviro Care Low Foam All Purpose Cleaner will clean your floors, walls and other surfaces without even needing to be rinsed. GreenSeal offers other environmentally-friendly cleaning solutions, as well, to meet your needs. These cleaners are typically non-toxic, biodegradable and some are even registered with the EPA. You do have to follow the mixing instructions when you use these. They come in a concentrated form and need to be mixed with water.