Thoughts on environmentally-friendly cleaning products and Covid-19….

“Organic: When we don’t mess with their chemistry, they won’t mess with our chemistry.”
~Unknown

The choice of cleaning products that we use is very important to us and when we started our property rental business Chelsea and I knew we would use environmentally-friendly products to clean the rental houses – products that will do no harm to ourselves and our guests. I had heard of Better Life products from the TV show Shark Tank and ordered samples from their website. Their prices seem reasonable and we both liked the way they cleaned and smelled after trying them out in our own homes.

Enter Covid-19. Because Better Life products contain no chemicals or pesticides we wondered if they would effectively clean – especially killing viruses that might be present. So we contacted the company and asked. Here is what they said in a recent email:

“BETTER LIFE® Cleaning Products are cleaners. They do not kill bacteria or viruses. They’re like the studies that show that washing your hands with a good soap has been proven effective at getting your hands clean. Our products work the same way. We use great, plant-based cleaning agents to clean the surfaces in your home and office, an important part in practicing good hygiene.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has issued guidelines specific to the Coronavirus outbreak, and keeping a clean house and clean hands are a great first line of defense against this virus. They suggest cleaning “high touch surfaces everyday using a household cleaning spray” and “washing hands often with soap and water”.

All our cleaners are not antibacterial, but they leave contaminated surfaces clean.

Disinfecting cleaning products are registered with the EPA as pesticides and leave a toxic residue on surfaces (those chemicals aren’t just deadly to bacteria and germs!). Our cleaning products are not pesticides, so we don’t make disinfectant or anti-bacterial claims.

What our products do is an amazing job of cleaning surfaces. If you saw us on Shark Tank, you saw our All-Purpose Cleaner clean a surface that had been contaminated with raw chicken. Disinfecting agents are toxic to people, pets, and the planet, not to mention the surfaces in your home, so we developed a better way using natural surfactants.”

So, we wondered, if we just use Better Life cleaning products, will they be effective at killing the Corona Virus? We did further research (including consumerreports.org) and found that, after cleaning, wiping surfaces down with 7% isopropyl alcohol, diluted household bleach or hydrogen peroxide, is effective, and hydrogen peroxide doesn’t need to be wiped off because it decomposes into oxygen and water, so it can be sprayed into hard to reach areas. ConsumerReports.org also said that plain old surface scrubbing with soap and water is effective, because the friction breaks the corona virus’s protective envelope when you “scrub like you’ve got sticky stuff on the surface and really need to get it off”).

While we’ll continue to research best cleaning practices for our homes and our owners’ rental properties we’re relieved to find that there are environmentally-friendly options that will destroy viruses without the use of pesticides and chemicals.

Until next time, we hope you’re making the most of this rare and unusual time at home with loved ones. (A further reminder that there really is always a silver lining – sometimes you just have to hunt a little longer to find it… :0)