Not all cleaning products are clean

Cleaning and housework is part of adult life (some love it, some hate it). I particularly hate it when I buy a product only to realise that while it's keeping my apartment spick 'n' span its having a nasty impact on the environment.

Some conventional cleaning products and accessories have a bad rep in the sustainability community - and for good reason. The plastic packaging, the toxic chemicals, the greenhouse gases and the micro-plastics are a recipe for disaster. When the residues from these products reach our oceans - whether its chemical or plastic - they are sadly ingested by marine life causing irreparable damage to the ecosystem.

Not only are they extremely detrimental to the environment they're not great for you either - from hormonal problems to respiratory issues the list goes on and on...

Its not all gloom and doom however. There are green options out there that do as great a cleaning job than their non-eco cousins - if not better. So to help you out we've linked our favourite cleaning accessories and products in store below.

As part of our Plastic Free July initiatives we're also offering 10% discount on the Iron & Velvet and Ecococonut ranges when you come in store this week and deposit 3 pieces of plastic waste you've picked up from the ground for recycling. Let's keep our little island clean.

What are you favourite cleaning swaps and tips?

Links to the above products starting top left:

1. Marseille soap

2. Laundry strips

3. Steel scourers

4. Compostable cleaning cloths

5. Refillable floor cleaner

6. Cleaning pouches

7. Coconut bottle brush

The buck stops with us

Its 4.30am and I can’t get my mind off this week’s BBC article with Coca Cola’s Head of Sustainability, Bea Perez.

Amidst emergency climate change conversations at Davos, Perez told the BBC that the drinks giant won’t remove single use plastic bottles since ‘customers still want them’. This right here folks is a perfect example of why consumers - us - need to use our buying power to exert pressure on companies like Coca Cola to make a change.

Let’s put things into perspective.

Coca Cola alone produces three million tonnes of plastic packaging a year; imagine the collective amount of plastic produced by the other manufacturing giants that end up in landfill and our oceans. Now while Coca Cola has said that it pledges to recycle as many bottles as it produces by 2030 there is no guarantee that the majority of these bottles will continue to make their way to the landfill (and let’s face it 2030 is also too far of a goal to even start to make a difference).

Imagine if Coca Cola - named 2019’s worst polluters - is swayed to move away from plastics by consumers, what impact this would have on the environment and the rest of the business community. Frankly, companies like Coca Cola with resources and dollars available to them should be focusing their efforts on research into alternative sustainable materials to plastic and not giving us wishy washy ten year deadlines to increase recycling efforts.

If large multinationals put a fraction of their resources towards research funding we may be able to resolve this plastic problem. However, as seen with Bea Perez and her simple statement, consumer behaviour dictates their business agenda.

If companies won’t make the change by themselves, the buck stops with us. We have voting power. We can exert pressure for change with our buying habits. Our money is our power and we decide who we give it to and which companies we support.

So will you continue to support companies like Coca Cola that shamelessly contribute towards our world’s fast deterioration or will you take a stand with your actions?

It's up to you.