If you’re ready to embrace a greener lifestyle when it comes to cleaning, you’re in luck. There’s no shortage of sustainable, eco-friendly, and plant-based household cleaning products that are gentle on the planet and its inhabitants – and, most importantly, they actually work. The tricky part is sorting through the countless options on the market to figure out which products are legitimate and which just have really good marketing.
To help simplify things, we spoke with Sydney Swanson, the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) healthy living science analyst, consumer safety science, who shared a few important tips. Her first recommendation is to look “for products that fully disclose all their ingredients on pack.” She adds: ” Look out for vague terms like ‘surfactant’ or ‘preservative’ on the packaging; this inadequate disclosure does not provide sufficient hazard data and can encompass a wide range of ingredients.” The same goes for fragrance: “The term ‘fragrance’ is an umbrella term that can house up to 4,000 different chemicals. These chemicals can be aquatic toxicants, phthalates, and those that release harmful volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the atmosphere.”
When asked if there are any ingredients she recommends scouting out in products, Swanson suggested a different approach. “Look out for the ingredients you would like to avoid,” she said. “Consumers can also look for certifications, such as EWG Verified, or those that match their specific needs or concerns. However, be wary of greenwashing claims like ‘non-toxic’ or ‘eco-friendly’ as these terms have no legal definition and are often just a marketing ploy.”
Ahead, we’ve rounded up seven eco-friendly cleaning products that are either EWG Verified or considered low-risk by the organization, including products for the kitchen, bathroom, laundry room, and more. Keep scrolling to shop our selects, starting at $5.
Experts Featured in This Article
Sydney Swanson is the Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) healthy living science analyst in the area of consumer safety science, specializing in the analysis of consumer products for EWG’s Guide to Healthy Cleaning and EWG’s Food Scores.She was previously a research assistant in the UCLA Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Research Lab and the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
