Surf the Web for information about different types of Eco-friendly products and you will find a plethora of blogs and sites effectively equating the term’s Eco-friendly, green, natural and sometimes even organic. As you read the information on many of these sites, they often identified common household products as being green or Eco-friendly.
But are those common household products always green and Eco-friendly?
Let’s take a look at Eco-friendly green cleaning products as an example. There are countless articles across the Web citing three very common household products as being “true eco-friendly or green cleaning products” including, baking soda, vinegar and hydrogen peroxide.
The first of these materials, baking soda (a.k.a. sodium bicarbonate), could actually be derived from a natural source, a mineral named trona or it also maybe produced synthetically via one of the Solvay methods. Historically most baking soda was produced via the Solvay method though for the last 20 years or so the bulk of baking soda delivered to the market is derived from mining trona. So in today’s world most baking soda likely is natural but definitely not organic. Additionally, exactly how Eco-friendly are most mining operations?
It does give pause for thought!
Most vinegar (which is mainly acetic acid) in today’s marketplace is likely produced through fermentation of vegetable matter though it can also be synthetically derived from petrochemicals. Nonetheless in this instance, most vinegar likely is organic, natural and yes even Eco-friendly or al least as much as most products are. Hydrogen peroxide, on the other hand is pretty straightforward since it is also synthetically produced by a Solvay method using a variety of chemicals, some of which are toxic and it is not natural.
All three of these common household products are often used and referred to as homemade green or Eco-friendly cleaning products. In the case of baking soda hydrogen peroxide, it appears to me the greenest and most Eco-friendly attribute of these two products is merely the fact they exist in every household.
So the next time you’re thinking about switching from your traditional cleaning products to more Eco-friendly products, you may want to consider the source materials used to manufacture them.
This is true for most people. Most people want to be eco-friendly but for the most part at least currently sometimes going green is not financially a good idea.