Spring Cleaning the Eco-Friendly Way

It’s that time of year. The snow is melting, and the trees and flowers are budding, thus offering a perfect opportunity for a clean, fresh start to the new season. If you’re trying to be vigilante and conscious about your cleaning products and their effect on the environment, then this article is for you! The Nielsen Global Home-Care Survey polled over 30,000 people from around the world, and the results show that people are finally understanding the environmental impacts of chemical cleaners. Some startling facts from The World Counts:

• Conventional cleaners consume 6.2 billion pounds of chemicals and 30 million trees
• Chemical cleaners can cause burns, respiratory issues, skin irritation, allergies, asthma, poisoning, and even death
• Household cleaners are the second most common cause of poisoning in children
• Nitrogen and ammonia are volatile organic compounds (VOCs) found in most conventional cleaning products and can negatively affect the environment

To fight off noxious chemicals and to create a better environment for the world, here is a list of books you and your patrons will be interested in picking up.

Instagram mogul Chantel Mila offers home-cleaning hacks compiled in The Dream Clean: Simple, Budget-Friendly, Eco-Friendly Ways to Make Your Home Beautiful. Cleaning, and especially organizing, can be intimidating, but Mila offers tips for eco-friendly ways to clean, style, and organize each room in your home that won’t break the bank.

In Sustained: Creating a Sustainable House Through Small Changes, Money-Saving Habits, and Natural Solutions, Candice Batista, an award-winning environmental journalist, provides readers with ideas to explore green cleaning alternatives that are ethical and not only better for the environment, but also better for your own health.

Clean and Green: 101 Hints and Tips for a More Eco-Friendly Home helps the environmentally conscious with “tried-and-tested” recipes for green cleaners from author Nancy Birtwhistle, a former practice manager with the NHS (National Health Service). Birtwhistle includes ways to effectively replace the harmful chemicals in your home.

In The Clean Living Handbook: 80+ All-Natural Soaps, Cleaners, Detergents and Nontoxic Household Products, the editors of Cider Mill Press offer up recipes for the most healthy and organic soaps and cleaners, centered around natural ingredients. They explain what green living is and how to put it into practice for your home.

The founder of “A Little Less Toxic”, Shawna Holman, provides a straightforward method to creating a healthy space inside and outside with A Healthier Home: The Room by Room Guide to Make Any Space a Little Less Toxic. Holman simplifies how to make your home healthy with step-by-step instructions.

In Home Detox: Make Your Home a Healthier Place for Everyone Who Lives There, we get a professional toxicologist author, Daniella Chace, to explain how to identify and remove toxic items from your home, with illustrations and recipes. This book also received a starred review from Library Journal!

For those approaching home improvements, Terence Conran provides tips and tricks on reducing your home’s carbon footprint in Eco House Book. Learn how to redecorate or update your current home to be more energy efficient.

There’s no need to be frightened by non-toxic cleaning products with these easy-to-read books by experts that can be trusted. But DO be frightened by the chemicals and toxins in most household cleaners. Check out this list for the above-mentioned titles and more for ideas on Eco-Friendly Cleaning!

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