apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

How do we get rid of the stuff we don't want anymore? I imagine that I shoudn't just dumpt it down the drain and I can't just recycle the container - do you know of a waste facility for the bad cleaning supplies?

I do not like scents in my cleaning products.
Do you know how hard it is to find unscented cleaning products in my grocery store?

I'm happy to have this list but, mostly out of laziness, I wish they had included the specific products (e.g. my beloved Lysol Kitchen/Bath Wipes?) that commonly contain these chemicals. It's easier to remember not to use a particular thing than it is to carry this list to store...

I just found this awesome website with eco-friendly cleaning recipes: http://www.ecocycle.org/hazwaste/recipes.cfm#altcleaners

You can make your own (unscented) products and almost everything is made out of 5 basic ingredients.

Wow

Back in the old days, folks used vinegar, lemons, baking soda, borax, soap and hot water to clean their homes until chemical companies convinced everyone that we had to have strange pink, blue and green liquids in plastic bottles...

...and it turns out that all we really ever needed was vinegar, lemons, baking soda, borax, soap and hot water.

I hear ya, Alana in Canada.
Method brand makes some unscented products. Also, there are recipes for making your own products (vinegar, baking soda)--this isn't as time consuming as it sounds. Then you can add essential oils (such as lemon, lavender, mint) if they don't bother you.

I have the same question as chicagomom72, what do we do with the old "toxic" cleaning supplies which we then can replace with green or homemade cleaning solutions? Do we have to take them to the hazardous waste at the dump or what?

I switched to green cleaning products as I used up my old ones, but if you want to give them a new home, try donating them to a local animal shelter. These things aren't toxic in small doses -- they're toxic when your whole city is using them.

Signe and chicagomom72,

i'm in your boat. i've already resigned myself to just using up the toxic cleansers i have now and to resupply them with natural alternatives, making a couple of the recipes myself. to dump them would be a bad choice.

i found cool natural cleaning recipes here:
http://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/136/1/24-handy-lemon-tips.html

you could make a party out of using up the baddies. wear one of those white face masks, open your windows, put on some rockin' music and clean clean clean your place one room at a time using the nasty cleansers. that should use up a lot of it at once!

great idea heather leaf, i think i might have to do that this week! yay for the spring cure.

When I switched to non-toxic cleaners I took all the old stuff to our local hazardous waste disposal site. I definitely didn't want to use them anymore!

I went totally Ecover throughout the house last year but I have only repurchased the washing liquid and fabric softener - the rest of the rang ejust didn't work like my regular cleaners - I'm all for not using chemicals but I like my house to be clean when I've cleaned it!

Thanks heatherleaf & signe - I found this site on the city of chicago website under sreets and sanitation and gives complete details about the recycling programs and sites/facilites that will take all of our waste (hurray!!). I would post the complete site, but its a bit long so go to cityofchicago.org, for more info. But here's the address to the household checmical recycling plant:

Location: 1150 N. North Branch Street (two blocks east of the Kennedy Expressway at Division Street)

Great article! I'm going to link it over to my methodlust blog! Thanks!

- Nate
methodlust
one man's unsupressed lust for method home products

I was just reading the Re-nest Greed in the Name of Green.
The Washington Post article it discusses talks about the absurdity of solving envronmental problems with yet more consumerism "Congregation of the Church of the Holy Organic, let us buy."
I would like to gently suggest to Chicagomom that you get rid of bad cleaners by using them. While it may be better to eventually buy greener products to replace the more toxic ones, these products are not so evil that we have to dispose to them immediately at a toxic waste facility.
We've used them for years, and we can use them for another couple of months until one by one the bottle empties. That is the green solution to the problem :)

For anyone who missed it, the article is definitely worth a read! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/04/AR2008030403198_pf.html