Good: Making your own cleaning products

When we shop in the supermarket, we could always see household cleaners that are labled as "save", "natural", and "green". However, many of them which look credible are actually fake that it actually has harmful impact to the environment. Many companies claim that their cleaning products are green and a safer alternative for both human and environment. Are they telling us the truth?

"Company select ingredients for cleaning products to enhance their performance, but a lot of chemicals, we simply don’t know anything about!" stated by Tom Natan, a chemical engineer with the non-profit National Environmental Trust. He points out that almost all of these "green" or conventional cleaning products contain harmful chemicals. It will both affect our health and planet if we keep using them.

Without the ingredients listed on the label of household cleaner, we, as consumers, are difficult to know exactly what is in the products. We couldn’t even know whether these products have benefits or not to our body. In "Six hidden dangers in your home”, one of the hiddens tells us about how mixing some cleaning products affect our health,

"Toxic gases can form when you use multiple cleaning products at the same time. Chloramines gas, which can be highly irritating to your lungs, forms when you mix ammonia with chlorine bleach. Mixing chlorine bleach with an acid-based product (like toilet bowl and over cleans, drain openers, or vinegar) can release chlorine gas, another lung-irrating fume."

Due to the fact that chemicals household cleaners make cleaning easier but not greener, why don't we start making our own natural, healthy cleaning prodcuts? All you need is just some baking soda and vinegar. To maintain our clean enviornment in safe and healthy ways, you may want to watch this video. It is about how to make your own cleaning products by using natural ingredients that does not pollute .

What is Greenwashing?

In the past few years, the Green Movement has become evermore pervasive in our society. More and more people have changed their purchasing habits that they are more willing to accept green products.

Unfortunately, as consumers become more conscious of the decisions on choosing products, corporations and government have started to realize the marketing power behind selling “green” products. They do not only spend lots of money to promote themselves as environmental friendly or green in public eyes, but also attempt to cloak the negative impact of their products by using all forms of advertising and public imaging such as printing environmental friendly logo onto their products. This act of misleading consumer regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service is GREENWASHING.

"The term greenwashing was coined by New York environmentalist Jay Westerveld in a 1986 essay regarding the hotel industry's practice of placing placards in each room promoting reuse of towels ostensibly to "save the environment". Westerveld noted that, in most cases, little or no effort toward waste recycling was being implemented by these institutions, due in part to the lack of cost-cutting affected by such practice. Westerveld opined that the actual objective of this "green campaign" on the part of many hoteliers was, in fact, increased profit. Westerveld hence monitored this and other outwardly environmentally conscientious acts with a greater, underlying purpose of profit increase as greenwashing."

TerraChoice first published the "Sins of Greenwashing" study in 2007. It measured the incidence of false and misleading environmental claims. The objective was to encourage legitimate “green” claims by disclosing those that are not. The 2007 report identified six such sins, and 2010 edition adds the seventh. According to the study, the following are the seven sins of greenwashing committed by retailers and manufacturers:

· Sin of the Hidden Trade-off
· Sin of No Proof
· Sin of Vagueness
· Sin of Irrelevance
· Sin of Lesser of Two Evils
· Sin of Fibbing
· Sin of Worshipping False Labels

The basic of greenwashing explained through cartoon:

Tom Fishburne's explaination on the inspiration of this piece:

"This cartoon idea sprang fully formed from a New York Times piece on the ridiculous lengths that some brands are going to be considered for the Home Depot Eco Options promotion (including, yes, a brand of electric chainsaw). It's a good example of some of the outlandish greenwashing we're all starting to see. And, how the issue is not as white and black as the old treehugger/lumberjack dynamic."