Clean round the bend?

Hannah Berry looks at what householders can do to help the environment, while still enjoying the smallest room.

This report looks specifically at toilet cleaners. It leaves aside other products on the market for keeping the WC smelling 'fresh', since environmentalists agree that the chemicals in cistern devices, rim blocks and bleaches are unnecessarily harsh and damaging for the environment.(1) Bleach, which is bought by 80% of households, is most commonly chlorine-based (sodium hypochlorite). Chlorine reacts readily with organic substances in the environment to create other hazardous compounds such as furans, dioxins and other toxicants.(2)

While there are good reasons to keep the toilet and surrounding area reasonably clean, it doesn't have to be 100% sterile. A cleaner with disinfectant properties should provide an adequate level of hygiene. Some of the highly perfumed products on the market could also present a long-term health risk. Toilet freshener blocks tend to list their main active ingredients, presumably because they come under different labelling laws from other cleaning products. So we know that many contain chlorine compounds like paradichlorobenzene, a suspected carcinogen, and other persistent contaminants of sewage sludge.

Ingredients

Chlorine compounds are found not only in bleach but also in many brands of toilet bowl cleaner. Chlorinated phenols may be used, for example, and these are toxic to respiratory and circulatory systems. However, you'd be hard pushed to know this, as there is no obligation on manufacturers to disclose the ingredients of toilet cleaners. For some reason, only the percentage of ionic and anionic surfactants have to be stated, which is next to useless information for anyone concerned about the environment. What is important is whether the surfactants are from mineral or vegetable sources. It can be taken for granted that the mainstream brands and supermarket own-brands are based on petrochemicals. They are products of the oil industry, along with geopolitical conflict, human rights abuses, water and air pollution and global warming.

Conventional toilet cleaners generally also contain petrochemical perfumes and corrosive mineral acids, usually sodium hydrogen sulphate, sodium hydrogen chloride or hydrochloric acid. This is for their descalant action, as uric scale, formed by insoluble compounds in urine, can form deposits on the bowl, and limescale can also build up in hard water areas. The acid makes them potentially irritant to the skin and eyes. They may also contain antibacterial disinfectants or germicides, certain types of which, such as Triclosan, are now being detected as a contaminant in human breastmilk and fish.(3)

The alternative products on the market, such as Bio-D, Ecover, Earth Friendly Products and Urtekram, use milder, plant-derived biodegradable, non-toxic ingredients, such as acetic or citric acid, which are still capable of thorough cleaning action. You are also buying from companies with a holistic philosophy rather than from global chemical industry giants.

Reaching for change

The REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals) legislation going through the European Parliament probably will not get onto the statutes until 2006, and then it will take years for the proposed safety tests on 30,000 chemicals, some of which were invented before systematic testing began and have continued in use without proper concern for their potential toxicity. Some animal welfare groups are concerned that REACH will give rise to an exponential increase in animal testing, but others believe it will act as a huge stimulus to the development of alternative means of testing.(4) The strategy is likely to include a commitment to the phasing out of all persistent or bio- accumulative chemicals.

Bottling it up

The most common ingredient (up to 90%) of most toilet cleaners is water. When this excess water is transported, energy and packaging is wasted and more solid waste is created for our landfills. Concentrated products (such as Bio-D's brand) are therefore a better option environmentally. Most plastic bottles used for cleaning products are theoretically recyclable, but this assumes you have the facilities nearby. Aerosols still contain damaging chemicals, so should be avoided in favour of pump action sprays.

Animal testing

The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) has begun a register of household cleaner brands which are endorsed under the campaign group's Humane Household Product Scheme. To comply, companies must have a fixed cut-off date for animal testing and agree to be independently audited to provide guarantees that this is applied right through the supply chain. Bio-D is currently going through the certification process. Urtekram is not eligible, as only UK companies are being considered at the moment. Earth Friendly Products appears on the equivalent list in the USA, on the website www.leapingbunny.org which is hosted by the Coalition for Consumer Information on Cosmetics (CCIC).

Ecover's position on animal testing demonstrates the variety of approaches and, unfortunately, appears to polarise issues into environmental progress versus animal rights. Ecover claims that the only way it can introduce products that are even less harmful to the environment is to introduce newly developed ingredients (the example it gives being biosurfacants).(5) Such ingredients have to be tested on animals by law, and this is how Ecover justifies its 'five-year rolling rule' as opposed to ?fixed cut off date' in terms of animal testing. Other companies that position themselves in the environmentally friendly market, however, appear to manage to create new products while using a fixed-cut-off date.

The big companies on the table (Henkel, Reckitt Benckiser, SC Johnson, Jeyes and Unilever) all test on animals or use animal tested ingredients.

Make your own

There are many recipes around for concocting your own cleaning products, generally involving some combination of bicarbonate of soda, vinegar, lemon juice, borax and essential oil. Urine itself is relatively odourless, but bacteria degrade it to ammonia compounds, with their characteristic smell. However, this can be washed away quite easily.

Regular spraying with a plant mister filled with water containing 10 drops of anti-bacterial tea-tree oil can help it to stay fresh-smelling, and for general cleaning, one suggestion is to sprinkle bicarb into the bowl, squirt with white vinegar and scour with a toilet brush.

If your toilet bowl is stained, the advice is to flush to wet the sides and then sprinkle a cup of borax around it, spray with half a cup of vinegar and leave for several hours or overnight before scrubbing with a toilet brush.

Toilet rings can be removed by rubbing on a paste of borax and lemon juice, and leaving for two hours before scrubbing, while suggested limescale treatment is an overnight application of flour and hot vinegar, followed by use of a wire brush and a few flushes in the morning.

References

1 Ethical Consumer: 17 (Dec 2001/Jan 2002)
2 www.ecos.com/NEWSITE/pages/healthsub/chlorine.html, accessed 10/11/04
3 ENDS Report: 304 (May 2000)
4 Telephone conversation with Women's Environmental Network, 10/11/04
5 Ethical Consumer: 81 (Feb/March 2003)
6 www.group4securicor.com/merger_g4_prospectus.pdf (2004)
7 ENDS Report: 339 (April 2003)
8 ENDS Report: 328 (May 2002 )
9 ENDS Report: 307 (August 2000)
10 Ecologist: 32, 3 (April 2002)
11 ENDS Report: 344 (September 2003)