8 Tips to Make Cleaning Cleaner
Do you know about Think Dirty?
We kinda wish we didn’t… which we’ll explain in a sec.
The Think Dirty app aims to “empower ingredient-conscious consumers to choose the safest beauty, personal, and household products.” You scan a product’s barcode, and the app spits out a hazard score based on the product’s ingredients. It also provides detailed information about those ingredients—and even suggests cleaner alternatives you might be interested in.
Sounds really great, right?
And it is. Until you start scanning your entire house and realize you should pro’ly replace literally everything.
Shopping with Your Health in Mind
People joke a lot how “everything will give you cancer these days.” As it turns out, there might actually be some truth to that dark humor when it comes to our skincare and household cleaners.
Long-story-short: Skincare and beauty items contain hundreds of ingredients known to cause irritation and allergic reactions in the short-term. In the long-term, and in high enough concentrations, some skincare ingredients are linked to cancer, nervous system damage, and reproductive health issues.
Yes, seriously.
It’s important to note these more serious claims are still relatively controversial. Many medical professionals argue that, even with daily use, these carcinogenic and toxic skincare ingredients will never reach the level needed to hurt us in the long-term.
But everyday household cleaning products are another story. Most regular-schmegular cleaning products—air fresheners, bleach, detergents, upholstery cleaners, floor polish, oven cleaners, and more—release dangerous chemicals, which have been known to contribute to:
Headaches
Allergic reactions
Asthma
Respiratory illnesses
These are well-studied and well-documented effects of cleaning your bathrooms and kitchens with what’s probably under your sink right this minute.
Shopping with Planet Earth in Mind
Sooooo, we should avoid these products when we can for our own sake, obvi. But when it comes to shopping clean, we also have to consider the damage these products do to Mama Earth.
Any product leaves some footprint on the environment. From sourcing and manufacturing to packaging and transporting, our skincare and household cleaners are no different. In addition to plastic packaging and petroleum-related ingredients, our typical skincare and cleaning products are having a huge effect on our water sources and marine life.
When we shower off our skincare products or rinse our sinks after a good spray-down with cleaner, we’re putting all the ingredients down the drain. They inevitably end up in our water filtration systems, which often aren’t strong enough to get rid of everything harmful. Then, our marine life and precious ocean ecosystems suffer the consequences.
What Does Clean Really Mean?
Even if we’re compelled to switch to cleaner products, doing so is harder than it sounds.
Like us, you’re probably not a chemist or biologist. Reading all the ingredients on the back of your favorite moisturizer or all-purpose cleaner is a less-than-enlightening experience. Like, what the fork are PEGs, anyway?
So we rely on the front of the bottle to tell us about the product. The problem? A product could label itself “100% natural” and not change a single thing about its ingredients.
In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration doesn’t regulate terms like green, all-natural, or clean. Anybody and their mother can use these terms, regardless of their impact on our health or environment.
Gross, right? That means it’s up to us to decide if a product is clean or not.
In general, that means looking for a product that protects human and environmental health by using nontoxic and/or plant-based ingredients. This doesn’t necessarily mean “chemical-free.” Some brands use synthetic ingredients that are totally OK for people and the planet—and sometimes work even better than their natural counterparts!
Easy Ways to Make Cleaning Cleaner
It can be overwhelming to switch up your skincare or cleaning routines for a cleaner, healthier alternative. Here are eight tips to help you get started.
Tip #1 Don’t throw anything away.
Going greener and cleaner means we have to consider Planet Earth as numero uno. It’s so tempting to just throw out everything and start over. But if you toss that basically brand-new bottle of lotion, you’re doing the environment a disservice. Use up what you have, then replace it with something better the next time around.
Tip #2 Start with long-wear items.
Along the lines of “don’t switch everything at once,” prioritize your shopping list by putting long-wear or daily-use items at the top.
For skincare, products intended to stay on your skin or cover large portions of your body—lotions and sunscreens in particular—should be among your first purchases. Household products should be prioritized by how often you use them. Your daily all-purpose spray should come before your weekly toilet bowl cleaner.
Tip #3 Know the ingredients to avoid.
There’s a looooooong list of ingredients causing arguments in the medical field. To make your clean-up process easier, take a look at common problematic ingredients and match them to your wants and priorities.
For example, this list from Harper's Bazaar is pretty expansive for all things clean beauty. For household products, the Environmental Protection Agency and Environmental Working Group both have lists of thousands of studied and tested products that do less damage to the environment.
Tip #4 Remember the packaging.
Single-use plastics suck. Look for products with sustainable, no-waste, or just less packaging. If more people opt for glass, biodegradable, and post-consumer recycled options, we can make a bigger dent in our world’s plastic crisis.
Tip #5 Try vegan or cruelty-free products.
While a product can certainly be vegan and still be full of concerning chemical ingredients, a vegan brand is less likely to be as toxic as their alternatives.
Cruelty-free products—those not tested on animals anywhere along the manufacturing or post-consumer research process—are also usually better choices because:
Animal-derived ingredients weren’t harvested at the animal’s expense.
Protecting animals protects our delicate ecosystems.
Tip #6 Clean more often.
We know, we know… cleaning is exactly zero fun. But just hear us out.
Commercial disinfectants pack a huuuuuge punch. And, often, we don’t actually need that much fire power. If we cleaned more often, we could use homemade cleaning agents like white vinegar, baking soda, and castile soap to get the job done without the industrial-strength products.
Tip #7 Ditch the palm oil.
Palm oil is a major driver of deforestation and carbon dioxide emissions. It disturbs local communities and pushes endangered animals to extinction. The World Wildlife Fund found that about 300 football fields’ worth of forests are cleared for palm oil production every hour.
Avoiding palm oil is really hard since it’s in practically everything—like detergents and soaps—but the orangutans will undoubtedly thank you for the switch.
Tip #8 Embrace transparency!
Knowing where your products come from is just as important as what they are. Ethical and sustainable creation or sourcing of ingredients, even if they’re synthetic, is necessary for a truly clean product.
Find brands that are honest about where they get their ingredients and how much of them they include in their formulations.
We love transparency.
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