Buyer Beware...Buyer Informed!

We all know the option is there for us to purchase environmentally friendly products in substitution to typical brand names. This blog, and outline of our experiment, will hopefully leave you with the ability to make an informed decision about your  purchasing habits for household cleaning items.



Algae blooms on Lake Winnipeg


As per Lake Friendly, an organization whose intent behind the Lake Friendly Label is to ultimately reduce the impacts on Lake Winnipeg from excessive nutrients and from other harmful materials in common household products each day in our homes, state that with the amount of phosphates entering the water from our yards and across the landscape, the products we flush and rinse down the drain enter our waters, are causing toxic algae blooms and polluting our water

Our Buyer Beware teams' initiative was to conduct experiments to compare the effectiveness of environmentally friendly products to typical brand name products to see if there was a difference in quality, effectiveness and price.

We tested laundry, dish and hard surface cleaners. We used three brand names in each category and one lake friendly product.

For the laundry experiment, we stained white shirts with five different stains and then washed the shirts separately in Tide, Gain, no name, Nature Clean (eco). Although Tide dominated this experiment, Nature Clean came in third for most effective.

For the dish experiment, I made lasagna to dirty up our dishes, and then I soaked one plate at a time in a sink with each of the products. Our products were Dawn, Palmolive, Sunlight, and Nature Clean (eco). Each plate was immersed half-way under water for less than 3 minutes. Nature Clean dominated the dish test, removing the most amount of residue during the soak test.

For the hard surface cleaner experiment, Hayley let a tomato-like residue dry on her stove for one day. The products tested were Lysol, Vim Oxy-Gel, Mr. Clean, and Nature Clean (eco). Vim Oxy-Gel removed the most amount of residue, but Hayley commented she liked how the Nature Clean was able to be applied. Nature Clean was in a close-second for effectiveness.

In closing, after completion of all experiments, our observations were that the typical brand names didn’t come out ahead in all cases, compared to the environmentally friendly products. This was surprising that the lake friendly products, that don’t contain harmful phosphates and by-products, can be just as effective.

The Nature Clean brand line seems not only to be effective and comparable in price, it is also the product that is most friendly to our environment and eco-system. Our recommendation is to make informed decisions when purchasing your household cleaners and take into consideration that the product choice you make, can be an environmentally friendly one without sacrificing quality.