Affiliation Office challenges affiliates and sisters to clean green in 2010

Living Simply, Living Franciscan
by Mary Ellen Dunford, affiliate
Over the next year as we participate in the 2010 Franciscan Living Challenge: Cleaning Green, I will provide information about the toxins found in household cleaners, the risks these toxins pose to our health and the environment, and alternative green products and recipes.

Since you have received several environmentally friendly cleaning solution recipes from the Affiliation Office, you may have already begun to experiment with green cleaning. If so, be careful how you discard old cleaning solutions. Don’t toss them in the trash or pour them down the sink drain, toilet or in your yard. If you dispose of your own trash don’t bury or burn the containers. Instead, contact your local disposal company or landfill site. Many of them have special toxin disposal areas or designated days when you can bring your household chemicals for safe disposal.

Here are a few more tips to get started with green cleaning:

1. Read product labels. Avoid using products with any warning stronger than “caution.”
2. Research the chemicals listed on product labels through one of the following Web sites:
   Household Products Database - www.householdproducts.nlm.nih.gov
   Toxnet - www.toxnet.nlm.nih.gov
   Scorecard - www.scorecard.org.
3. Avoid products with fragrances. A clean home should smell like nothing at all.
   
4. Use homemade cleaning solutions made from common ingredients such as vinegar, baking soda, washing soda, lemon juice and borax.
   
5. Find and purchase cleaning solutions that bear the Green Seal logo. Green Seal certifies cleaning products to be effective at cleaning yet safer for human health and the environment.
   
6. Interview cleaning services and hire one that is Green Clean Certified. Many national cleaning services and local cleaning companies are now making the switch to green products, but you should ask exactly what they use.
   
7. Make sure the cleaning supplies that are used by your cleaning service or by yourself are recognized as being free of toxins.
   Editor’s note: For additional cleaning green tips and to watch a tutorial with affiliate Chandra Sherin, click here.