Take 'green' to the cleaners with new products, old recipes

— -- Is it possible to clean green? Is it necessary to give up Mr. Clean to be green?

If you're not sure, that may explain the surge in books, magazine articles and websites explaining how you can clean and "detox" your home without chemicals found in familiar cleaning products such as Mr. Clean.

But the bald-headed guy with the big biceps and the white T-shirt is not giving up his market share so easily. He's, well, cleaning himself up, or at least trying to smell nicer, as more sweeter-fragranced "green" cleaners challenge industry leaders — Big Soap — for space on store shelves.

Meanwhile, the retro cleaning movement is urging more consumers away from cleaners altogether, touting the cleaning (and cost-effective) properties of such familiar household items as vinegar, lemon juice and baking soda.

We have come a long way since the Whole Earth Catalog became the green bible of the 1960s counterculture. "Green is part of the culture and part of lifestyle now," says Adam Lowry, co-founder of Method, which bills itself as the "environmentally friendly" brand of cleaning products. Lowry and Method partner Eric Ryan wrote Squeaky Green: The Method Guide to Detoxing Your Home (Chronicle Books, $16.95). They say the chemicals in household cleaners could be worse for you than dirt and dust.

"Green is a marketing term, not a scientific one, and in consumer marketing overall, green is probably overused, " says Brian Sansoni, who represents Big Soap as spokesman for The Soap and Detergent Association, whose 105 members control most of the estimated $16 billion-$17 billion U.S. cleaning market.

But everybody understands what "toxic" means. "You know how a plastic shower curtain smells? That's off-gassing a bunch of chemicals," says Lowry, whose book is packed with details about "nasty stuff that lies hidden in your home."

"The problem with chemicals is that we don't know what they do at very low levels, and it's expensive to do a risk assessment of a shower curtain off-gassing in a home," Lowry says. (His solution: Get a cloth shower curtain.)

Unnerving buzz like this can affect consumer buying patterns. Survey data show that nearly half or more female shoppers say they buy products because they are good for the environment, says Candace Corlett, president of the shopper analysis firm WSL Strategic Retail, which publishes the How America Shops survey.

"This was not on anybody's radar even 10 years ago. It was still considered very fringe, and Al Gore was talking to audiences of empty chairs," Corlett says. "We measure what (shoppers) are actually doing, and they are doing the things that manufacturers and retailers make it easiest for them to do — such as being able to buy CFL light bulbs at Home Depot."

So a green cleaning product smells better and has fewer chemicals and prettier packaging — but does it work at cleaning and disinfecting? "That's what will undo the success of (green) products — if they don't take the ring out of tub or collar," Corlett says.

This could be Big Soap's mantra. The industry is fighting claims ("irresponsible pot shots," Sansoni says) that its products are unsafe while introducing new green products to respond to unmistakable consumer demands. For instance, Sansoni says, the new concentrated laundry detergents use less water in washing and less plastic in packaging.

But the No. 1 consumer demand remains effectiveness, he says, and they'll give up on green if it "doesn't work or you have to use more of it and/or it takes more time to clean."

People such as Jill Potvin Schoff, author of Green Up Your Cleanup (Creative Homeowner, $16.95), have given up on the cleaning aisle entirely. Instead, she swears by old-fashioned recipes, such as mixing baking soda and water to make a paste for washing hard-to-clean shower doors. She says it's "incredibly effective" and costs a lot less, too.

"People are starting to recognize that what you put into your house stays in your house," says Schoff, who wrote her book (it's spiral-bound and printed on recycled paper using soy ink) after discovering her young son was strongly allergic to detergents. Soon she was alarmed at the potential long-term effects of chemical buildup in her house.

"It's always a good idea to keep out as many chemicals as possible, especially since the 1970s, when heating costs went up and houses became more airtight."

Sansoni agrees there are "a lot of great things you can do with baking soda" but says most consumers are not going to make their own cleaning products unless they have a medical reason to do so. "How many Americans really have time to sit at home and play Mr. Wizard with cleaning products?"