Green Detergents: The Secret Key to Sustainability?

Reduce, reuse, and recycle. These are typically known as the three R's of the environment. Every year, Americans throw away billions of containers and other packaging materials that end up in landfills. Reducing the amount of waste you produce is one way to help the environment. Another way to help the environment is to recycle. Many of the things we use every day, like paper bags, soda cans, and milk cartons, are made out of materials that can be recycled. Recycled items are put through a process that makes it possible to create new products out of the materials that come from the old ones. Reusing is another way to help the environment. The idea is simple: instead of throwing things away, try to find ways to use them again. Reusing items made from plastic and other materials helps save the environment, because one piece of plastic can take 450 years to decompose into the soil. It would take 5 times the average human’s lifetime to fully decompose plastic. When water is reused to irrigate plants, the result might be different from irrigating plants with freshwater. Clearly, the reused water should cause little or no environmental damage. In a similar way, if water which has been combined with human waste or other pollutants is used to irrigate plants, the plants will not grow as fast and produce as nutritious crops as plants irrigated with regular water. Detergents are very similar in this case; when they are mixed with water, some might not harm the plants, but some detergent types might damage the soil, plants, or other creatures. Detergents continue to harm nature because of the chemicals inside of them, the way they are used, and how they affect animate and inanimate things (“Going Green as you Clean,” 2008).

According to the dictionary, “Detergents are a water soluble cleaning agent that combines with impurities and dirt to make them more soluble.” Detergents are used when utensils, plates and bowls are put into dishwashers most of the time. In a dishwasher, the detergent and water mix inside and clean all the contents of the dishwasher. Afterwards, the water mixed with detergent recedes backwards into pipes, which go underground. These detergents have the potential to harm the environment due to the amount of toxicity which the chemicals inside them might have. If the detergent does not have high levels of toxic chemicals, then it will easily blend in with the soil and not cause much damage (“Going Green as you Clean,” 2008).

 Green detergents are detergents which do not affect soil, lakes and rivers. If water is to be successfully reused to irrigate plants, it is critical that the reused water not be harmful to seeds and other creatures that impact the health of the soil. ‘Green’ detergents are also made from safer products and clean just as effectively as competing detergents that contain many more chemicals. In addition to dishwashing detergents there are also laundry detergents. Using ‘green’ laundry detergents also makes sure that there are no harmful chemicals absorbed into the skin or breathed in by the person cleaning. On the other hand, the detergents will cause little or no damage to whatever they are being used for: cleaning clothes or washing dishes. According to Weber(n.d), “When you use many cleaning products, "harmful chemicals are being released into the environment," says Reichert. Not great for you and the people around you to breathe in. Changing to greener methods, "helps reduce pollution to our waterways and the air and it minimizes your impact on ozone depletion and global climate change with fewer smog-producing chemicals," advises Snow. Many green products also use recyclable packaging which minimizes waste (para. 2).” The benefits which ‘green’ detergents have on the society is that the society will be free of many toxins and the environment, overall, will be much safer than an environment filled with the chemicals coming from a conventional detergent. ‘Green’ detergents also result in better air quality. The harmful chemicals and toxins from a conventional detergent normally would evaporate from the soil or water and get mixed in with the air. That would result poor air quality, which can harm the lungs and other organs of people who breathe in that air (“7 Benefits of Green Cleaning”).

Conventional detergents are detergents that are filled with many chemicals and can easily harm organisms and microorganisms. These detergents affect the environment in multiple ways; the one main way in which they affect the environment is that the chemicals inside them harm the air and crops grown by anyone. These detergents are most commonly used when cleaning dishes and cleaning clothes. After people wash clothes, the clothes are worn. The clothes are filled with lots of chemicals and toxic things because the clothes were washed with a material which was already toxic when it was first made. The chemical factors in conventional detergents are also very high, so it is not very good for the environment. All types of conventional detergents do not adjust very well in the environment. Unlike ‘green’ detergents, which mix with water and settle into the soil or air, conventional detergents harm the places or organisms around them (“The Chemistry of Cleaning Clothes”).

“Toxic substances are materials that are poisonous to living organisms. There are hundreds of thousands of artificial and natural toxic substances, also known as toxins, that can be solids, liquids, or gaseous.” (Blanchfield, 2017) A study conducted that tested the effect of different detergents on plants found that as each plant grew, it was affected by the type of detergent in the cup. Even though the detergents are both used to clean things, each detergent will end up having a different outcome of the size of the plant. Even though there can be many different variables, like the temperature of the room, the plants are all affected in similar ways. The toxicity is measured by how many plants actually survived and germinated and how many died. Toxicity can be measured by the effect the substance has on an organism, a tissue or a cell. Individuals will respond differently to the same dose of a substance because of a number of factors including their gender, age and body weight. Therefore, a population-level measure of toxicity is often used. The probability of an outcome for a population is then related to a given individual in a population. In the same way, seeds can be used to tell the toxicity of a detergent or any other material which gets reused in the water cycle. The effect on a plant which was mixed with a detergent with many toxins is that the seed might not grow as quick and tall as another plant mixed with a detergent with less toxicity. The toxicity (the potential danger) of all toxic materials depends upon dosage. Some toxins are deadly in very small doses; others can be tolerated at relatively high levels before an observable reaction occurs. Natural toxins occur everywhere, and many are extremely toxic. Some, such as peroxides and nitric oxide, even occur naturally within our bodies. Many people avoid potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, and other members of the nightshade family because they are sensitive to the alkaloid solanine that they contain. Mushrooms and molds contain innumerable toxic substances that can be lethal to adults in minute quantities. Ricin, a protein produced by castor beans, can kill a mouse with a dose of just three ten-billionths (3/10,000,000,000) of a gram. Ricin is one of the most toxic organic substances known. All chemical substances can become toxic in high enough concentrations, but even very toxic chemicals may cause no reaction in very small amounts. 

One of the most important characteristics that determines a substance's toxicity is the way the substance moves through the environment and through our bodies. Most chemicals and minerals move most effectively when they are dissolved by water or by an oil-based liquid. Generally, compounds of mineral substances, including sodium chloride, selenium, zinc, copper, lead, and cadmium, dissolve best in water. Organic chemicals (those containing carbon), including chlorinated hydrocarbons, benzene, toluene, chloroform, and others, dissolve most readily in oily solvents, including gasoline, acetone, and the fatty tissues in our bodies. In the environment, inorganic substances are often mobilized when ground is disturbed and watered, as in the case of irrigated agriculture or mining, or when waste dumps become wet and their soluble contents move with runoff into groundwater or surface water systems.The parts of people’s bodies that are most easily damaged by exposure to toxic substances, however, are areas where cells and tissues are reproducing and growing. Brain cells, bones, and organs in children are especially susceptible, and improper cell replication is magnified as growth proceeds. Serious developmental defects can result--a widespread example is the accumulation of lead in children's brains, causing permanent physical disabilities. In adults, any tissue that reproduces, repairs, or replaces itself regularly is likely to exhibit the effects of toxicity. Linings of the lungs and intestines, bone marrow, and other tissues that regularly reproduce cells can all develop defective growths, including cancer, when exposed to toxic substances. An individual's susceptibility to a toxic substance depends upon exposure--usually workers who handle chemicals are the first to exhibit reactions--and upon the person's genetic resistance, age, size, gender, general health, and previous history of exposures. (“Measuring Toxicity,” 2012).

The use of greywater to irrigate plants is an example. Greywater is the water produced by showering, cleaning clothes, washing dishes, etc. Clearly, if grey water is to be used for growing plants, the kinds of detergents used in the house will have to be eco-friendly. Greywater may contain traces of dirt, food, grease, hair, and certain household cleaning products. While greywater may look “dirty,” it is a safe and even beneficial source of irrigation water in a yard. Keep in mind that if greywater is released into rivers, lakes, or estuaries, its nutrients become pollutants, but to plants, they are valuable fertilizer. Aside from the obvious benefits of saving water, reusing greywater keeps it out of the sewer or septic system, thereby reducing the chance that it will pollute local water bodies. Reusing greywater for irrigation reconnects urban residents and our backyard gardens to the natural water cycle. In other words, the detergents used should cause little or no environmental damage. Black water is the type of water which includes human waste. Black water is not safe at all to use for irrigation because bad things from humans get mixed with seeds, which will ruin the growth of seeds and how well the crop goes. A blackwater river is a type of river with a slow-moving channel flowing through forested swamps or wetlands. As vegetation decays, tannins leach into the water, making a transparent, acidic water that is darkly stained, resembling tea or black coffee. White water is fast shallow stretches of water in a river. This water is normally clear and is almost like freshwater. The three types of water: blackwater, greywater and white water are all useful in their own ways. Black water is not used as much just because it contains human waste and the human waste could end up harming other people and nature as well. Unlike white water, gray water may contain soap particles, fat and oil from cooking, hair, and even flakes of human skin. The exact contents of gray water depend heavily on the household producing it (“How Grey Water Reclamation Works”).

Reducing, reusing and recycling are what will clean the environment and make sure that our bodies are not polluted as well. The discoveries through toxicity and many other factors are what have brought humans so deep into the circle of life. Many humans are not careful and they buy items just for the sake of using them to get something done. Recycling the water is what will help humans in the long term. So remember the 3 R’s: they are the key to sustainable life. ◆

Sources

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