D.I.Y. Cleaning Products

  • Reporter Karen Kelly's daughter making safer cleaning products at home (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Most people probably don’t enjoy cleaning. But we’ve all got to do it. And if you’ve ever looked at the household cleaner aisle in the grocery store, you know there can be some pretty strong chemicals involved. Karen Kelly reports on a cheaper, chemical-free alternative:

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Sewage Treatment Missing the Mark?

  • Some people say wastewater treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals. (Photo courtesy of the US EPA)

A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:

Transcript

A new study is looking at just
how well wastewater treatment
plants remove household chemicals
and pharmaceuticals from water.
Samara Freemark reports
on why some researchers are worried
that the plants aren’t doing a good
enough job:

Most wastewater treatment plants clean water with a mix of chemicals and bacteria. But that process is decades-old. And it was designed mostly to deal with industrial pollutants.

Some people say treatment plants might not be doing a good job taking out other pollutants like household chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In fact, the treatment process can actually cause many of these pollutants to mutate – for example, some detergents break down into compounds that cause reproductive problems.

Anthony Hay is studying the issue at Cornell University.

“Hopefully they’re degraded into something non-toxic, but in some cases microbial degradation of some pollutants can actually make things worse. We need to understand what those changed products do, how they behave, and what risks they might pose.”

That’s what Hay hopes his study will help clarify.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

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D.I.Y. Cleaning Products

  • Reporter Karen Kelly's daughter making safer cleaning products at home (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Most people probably don’t enjoy
cleaning. But we’ve all got to do it.
And if you’ve ever looked at the household
cleaner aisle in the grocery store, you
know there can be some pretty strong
chemicals involved. Karen Kelly reports
on a cheaper, chemical-free alternative:

Transcript

Most people probably don’t enjoy
cleaning. But we’ve all got to do it.
And if you’ve ever looked at the household
cleaner aisle in the grocery store, you
know there can be some pretty strong
chemicals involved. Karen Kelly reports
on a cheaper, chemical-free alternative:

(sound of store)

I’ve just arrived at my neighborhood grocery store with a plan: to find what I
need to make my own household cleaners.

I head over to the cleaning aisle and pull out a list of ingredients I got off the
internet.

I see borax and
washing soda on the shelf.
They`re both made from naturally-occuring minerals and cost about five bucks
each for a 4 to 5 pound box.
I look around for soap flakes – to make my own dish soap – and find a big bar I
can grate myself.

The only thing missing is castile soap. It’s a biodegradable soap used in a lot of
these recipes.
I’ll grab that next at the natural foods store.

To be honest, I never paid that much attention to the ingredients in household
cleaner – until I used something with dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride on
my bathtub. It comes with warnings.

I rinsed it and took a bath. My 4-year-old also took a bath.
And we both ended up with a very itchy skin rash.

That convinced me. I had to find a safer way to clean the tub that, number one,
worked. And number two, wasn’t too expensive.

Which pretty much meant I’d have to make it myself.

We decided to start with the all-purpose cleaner.

Karen Kelly: “Okay. We need borax, which we have, castile soap, hot water.”

Child: “We have that! We can just turn on the sink and make hot water!”

Kelly: “And vinegar.”

Child: “We have, do we have vinegar?”

Kelly: “Yes.”
Child: “And Mom, we have hot water.”

We mix up a recipe I found on the David Suzuki Foundation’s website.

(sound of stirring and banging)

They’ve got a whole bunch of do-it-yourself recipes for bathtub scrubbers,
laundry soap, furniture polish, you name it.

Lindsay Coulter is the person who devised these concoctions.
She says a lot of people forget that you don’t need fancy products to get your
house clean.

“You know, if you talk to your grandmothers or your great-aunts, you’ll find that
they too used things like washing soda, baking soda, white vinegar, and a basic
castile soap. Things like vinegar – it’s acidic and helps lift grease and
deodorizes. A lot of the things you’re cooking with anyways, so you probably
already have it in your kitchen. And the benefit? Just peace of mind that you
know what goes into it.”

But does it work? It’s time to find out.

(sound of spraying)

We spray. We wipe. The bathroom sink shines.

Next, we try the bath tub scrubber. It’s a mix of castile soap, vinegar – which is
a natural disinfectant – baking soda, and water.

(sound of cleaning the tub)

The tub looks great, actually. And you know what? This is a lot cheaper.

Brand name all-purpose cleaning sprays are about 4 bucks a bottle where I live.
It cost me just a dollar – and about 5 minutes – to fill that same bottle with my
own mix.

So it’s cheap, it’s easy to make, and, best of all, I don’t have to worry about chemical reaction after a soak
in the tub.

For The Environment Report, I’m Karen Kelly.

Child: “Is it recording? Okay.”

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The Cleaner Dry-Cleaner

  • Jim Gilligan, president of Snedicor’s Cleaners, made the big switch to liquid silicone (Photo by Kyle Norris)

There’s a push in the dry cleaning
industry to become more environmentally
friendly. But this change can be a big risk
for business owners. Kyle Norris talks to
one dry cleaner who has made the change.
And he says he’s not looked back yet:

Transcript

There’s a push in the dry cleaning
industry to become more environmentally
friendly. But this change can be a big risk
for business owners. Kyle Norris talks to
one dry cleaner who has made the change.
And he says he’s not looked back yet:

Jim Gilligan is president of Snedicor’s Cleaners.

And for years, his business has used a chemical called perchloroethylene to
clean clothes. Actually, let’s just call it ‘perc’ which is what everyone calls
it. But Gilligan says he did not like perc, for lots of reasons. For one thing,
he had to store the chemical in these big tanks.

“It was hard to deal with, it was heavily regulated, there was potential for
spills and other types of disasters.”

Perc is a toxic air contaminant. There’s evidence it can cause cancer, as well
as liver and kidney damage. Contact with perc can cause lots of problems
like nausea, dizziness, skin irritation, loss of consciousness, and even death.
If perc leaks into the soil or ground water it can be a disaster. Partly because
perc is hard to extract from water.

Perc was the industry standard for years. And today about 70% of American
dry cleaners still use it. But there’s a growing movement to stop using it and
embrace greener techniques.

Gilligan had heard about some of these newer, eco-crunchier techniques. But
he’d also heard that they did not work as well as perc.

Then he visited another dry cleaning plant. Its owner had switched from
using perc to using liquid silicone. Which is basically liquefied sand.

“That gave me a confidence, right. That was, because we’d been hearing
from the industry as whole that it didn’t clean as well. And of course it’s
great moving into a green technology but if your customers wind up
dissatisfied and you go out of business, that would sort of defeat the
purpose.”

Gilligan says he was impressed with how well liquid silicone cleaned
garments. So he made the big switch. He got rid of his perc machines. And
he bought a new machine that used liquid silicone. To the tune of $80,000
bucks.

And as he gathered his employees to show them the new machine, he did
something kind of kooky.

“I actually took a little cup and I drank it.”

The liquid silicone. The stuff that cleans the clothes. Dude drank it! Says it
tasted like salty vegetable oil.

“Everyone was shocked to see that, but I just wanted to show them that how
confident I was that this was a safe technology.”

And since that shot of liquid silicone, Gilligan hasn’t had any issues. His
customers tell him they’re happy with the results. And financially he’s done
really well this year.

But not all dry cleaners are ready or willing to take this kind of risk. Dry
cleaning is a tough business to make a profit in. So plenty of cleaners want
to stick with what they know works—which for a lot of them, is using perc.

In fact, there’s a tension in the industry these days. Between the old
schoolers—cleaners who use perc. And the new schoolers—people trying
out newer, greener methods.

Chris Allsbrooks is with the Drycleaning and Laundry Institute.

“And right now our mix is changing because there’s
more people coming into the industry as some of the people with the older
views are leaving the industry.”

And the laws are changing, too. California has said that perc can no longer
be used by that state’s dry cleaners by the year 2023. And New Jersey is
considering following in California’s footsteps.

For Jim Gilligan, the switch was the just right thing to do: as a business
owner and as someone who cares about the environment. He says now, he
breathes easier. And so do his employees. And his customers say a green dry
cleaner works for them.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Many Household Chemicals Not Tested

Two government agencies are agreeing to work together to test chemicals in products we use. But Lester Graham reports… there are still lots of hurdles and years of delays before products already on the shelves can be tested for safety:

Transcript

Two government agencies are agreeing to work together to test chemicals in products we use. But Lester Graham reports… there are still lots of hurdles and years of delays before products already on the shelves can be tested for safety:


Three years ago, a government report showed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could not assess the health risks of 85% of the chemicals in the products you probably have in your bathroom or out in the garage.

The Government Accountability Office found part of the reason then, and now, was because laws protect corporations’ secrets—over public knowledge about health risks.


On top of that other reports found the EPA was years behind in testing chemicals at all.


Now the EPA and the National Institutes of Health are going to be working together to test chemicals faster and without using lab animals.


The agencies will be testing the safety of chemicals ranging from pesticides to household cleaners to see if they harm human health.


The one problem… it will take, quote, “many years” to validate the new testing methods before the testing program can be fully implemented.

For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Greener Cleaners

  • Joseph DeSimone, founder and chairman of Micell Technologies, explains the cleaning process that clothes undergo in his Hanger’s store in Morrisville, NC.

Consumers may not realize it, but the simple act of dropping off clothes at the cleaners could end up harming the environment. For decades, dry cleaners have used a toxic solvent to clean clothes. Now there are many contaminated former dry cleaning sites across the country. But a solution to the dry cleaning problem may now be available. A new chain of cleaners is touting a “greener” system that uses a non-toxic everyday substance. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Patty Murray has more: