The Carbon Footprint of Household Cleaners

Knowledge and awareness are key aspects in reducing your carbon footprint. By understanding the contents of the products you are using, it becomes much easier to make carbon-friendly choices in your own home. Because of this, practicing DIY-style green cleaning with simple ingredients that you can pick and choose from yourself can significantly reduce your carbon footprint. It can also be fun, crafty and eco-friendly!
Estimated carbon footprints of chemical production vary widely from chemical to chemical. While some estimates place household cleaning and personal care products at approximately 0.7lbs of CO2 emissions per pound of product, this number is nothing more than a widely estimated guess. It is made even harder to predict the carbon footprint of our cleaners due to the lack of information on the actual contents. A study conducted in 2012 by the EWG Cleaners Database concluded that only 7% of cleaning products sufficiently disclose their composition. This means that despite efforts to read labels and search for non-toxic, low impact cleaning products, we may not be aware of what we are using. Even some “Green Cleaning” brands are not transparent with their labels! The only way to be completely confident about the contents of the cleaning products you use is to make them yourself.