CLEAN GREENER A Waste Audit for Your Cleaning Routine WORDS BY LANI FURBANK
I’ve always considered myself to be an extremely clean person. Then Covid-19 arrived and my obsession went off the charts. I expect many of you can relate to washing your hands 37 times a day, using sterile technique from that doctor’s YouTube video to disinfect groceries and wiping down surfaces every hour. Whether these precautions are necessary or overkill, they make me feel safer. My biggest concern is that the uptick in cleaning has also led to a serious increase in waste. Empty bottles of soap and cleaning solution and piles of crumpled disinfectant wipes haunt my dreams. Jokes aside, plastic waste is a major global problem. More than 8.3 billion metric tons have been produced over the last six decades and only 9 percent of it is recycled, according to a 2017 study published in Science Advances. The majority of it ends up in landfills or in the oceans, where it takes centuries to break down, killing wildlife and resulting in tiny, toxic particles called microplastics – truly the stuff of nightmares. This realization set me on a path to become a mean, green cleaning machine. You can also green your cleaning routine by making the following easy swaps. 50 | JUNE 2020
FIRST PAGE. Foaming hand soap. Photo courtesy of Blueland. SECOND PAGE. Dishwasher detergent pods. Photo courtesy of Dropps.
