Emerging sustainable/green cleaning products: health and environmental risks

Jarosław Górecki

Sustainable development aims to bring a new perspective to our lives without compromising customer needs and quality. Along with sustainable development many innovative solutions came out. One of them is sustainable green cleaning products and techniques. Today, emissions from conventional cleaning products may cause severe health and environmental issues. Especially sick building syndromes such as eye, skin and respiratory irritations are main health effects of them. They may also contribute to global warming, ozone layer depletion, aquatic toxicity, and air pollution. It has already been proven that misuse, storage, disposal and production stages of cleaning products can cause stream pollution. As an emerging and innovative sustainable technique “green cleaning” refers to environmental improvements such as pollution and greenhouse gas emission reduction, conservation of resources, preservation of wildlife, and reduction of plastic and waste that arise from used conventional techniques. Green cleaning products contribute these improvements using less or no harmful chemicals and Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). Green cleaning products also encourage the usage of recyclable and renewable materials. Main purpose of this article is considered as while illustrating and questioning present conventional cleaning products’ necessities, values, environmental and health impacts, to obtain an understanding the benefits of sustainable green cleaning products and methods for the more sustainable and healthy indoor atmosphere and environments in the buildings.