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Make-Your-Own Green Cleaners Catching On

By Melissa Browne,  FOX NEWS
June 13, 2008

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Forget the Tupperware party. Today’s get-togethers are all about going green.

Green parties are the latest trend catching on across the country. The premise involves gathering at a friend’s home and learning how to make your green or environmentally friendly cleaners.

A group of women recently gathered in South Orange, N.J., for a green party, where participants used a green party kit supplied by the nonprofit organization, Women’s Voices for The Earth.

“It’s really easy,” Dori Gilels, executive director of the organization, told FOXNews.com. “And that’s the beauty of these green cleaning party kits. For one, the kit gives you everything you need to know to do this and secondly the ingredients that we use in these products, are ingredients you find commonly in the grocery store.”


Women’s Voices for The Earth issued a report last year called Household Hazards, which found that some of the most commonly used household cleaners may actually do more harm than good.

The organization “looked at five different chemicals that are commonly found in household cleaning products that we know are linked with asthma and reproductive harm,” Gilels said.

So how do you “go green” while cleaning? First, you’ll need some ingredients like

baking soda, distilled white vinegar, olive oil and lemons, all of which, Gilels said, clean as well as conventional cleaners such as bleach and ammonia.

“I think there’s a real public misconception about how sterile our home environments need to be,” says Gilels.

Gilels said many household cleaners contain vinegar, which is a good disinfectant and is effective at “killing about 90 to 98 percent of germs in your house.”

Jen Maidenberg, a working mother, said she has long been wary of some of the products used in her home.

“I do think that most of these products should work just as well if not better,” Maidenberg said, as she mixed together a homemade “creamy cleanser,” adding her favorite scent, lavender.

“I think that we grew up used to the smell of cleaning products, so we associate clean with that smell, but it’s not true,” Maidenberg said, adding that she is planning to switch all her store-brought cleaners to homemade ones.

Gilels added that homemade cleaners are cheaper than store-bought ones. On average, a 32-ounce, all-purpose cleaner from a store can cost anywhere from $4 to $8, but at the green party-version costs just 38 cents.

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