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Best Natural Cleaning Products

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Look up natural on and you will find a simple definition: “Existing in or formed by nature (opposed to artificial).” So you might think that it should be pretty easy to pick out which cleaning products are natural and which aren’t. Well think again. Just like other things in life — nutrition labelsclothing sizesdating profiles — the ingredient list on “natural” products can be mighty misleading. But there are brands out there trying to change that.   No, it’s not that brands are trying to make their toxic ingredients more visible to us as consumers, but instead, there are brands popping up that are trying to do away with the toxic ingredients all together. Clean and cruelty-free beauty (that includes men’s skin care you guys) continues to get a lot of news coverage, but clean homecare? Not quite as much.   That’s not to say there aren’t new options and better practices that are becoming more available both in accessibility as well as cost. Terracycle, which we use here at AskMen HQ, makes recycling those hard-to-recycle objects much easier — think chip bags and gum wrappers. Loop, a new initiative from Terracycle, employs a broader tactic by partnering with mega brands such as Unilever and Kroger and acts as a storefront for well known products in fully recyclable packaging you receive and send back over and over again which creates something of a ... loop.   You’re not looking for the same dishwasher liquid or glass cleaner you’ve always used just in a reusable package? You want something that’s not going to end up in the landfill or pollute our shared water supply? We hear you and we agree. That’s why we dug deep, and out of all the natural, non-toxic, eco-friendly brands we could find out there, we picked these 15 best natural cleaning products because they look great, work well and don’t cost a fortune.   Blueland might be one of the easiest eco-friendly brands around at the moment. If you have ever dropped the fizzy old school Alka-Seltzer for headache relief, then you have already figured out how to use Blueland. The brand’s founder Sarah Paiji has a simple mission — quit using so much damn plastic. After the realization that every single piece of plastic ever made — Every. Single. One. — remains on the Earth and most likely is living in the ocean somewhere, Paiji made a brand that uses what it calls the Forever Bottle. By combining a concentrated cleaning tablet comprised of natural derived, biodegradable ingredients with water, you have one of three super cleaners or a hand soap.       A force of nature this is indeed, if its shtick stands up, and as much as we could tell, it did, it kills 99.9 percent of germs with a combination of only salt, water, and vinegar. This futuristic brand uses ingredients as old as time to create an electric cleaner that covers everything from the diaper genie to baby’s binky. Yes, you heard that right. The same cleaner is not only safe enough for both, but provides both — and anything else — with a thorough, sanitized clean. The trick? Electricity. Using a minimal amount of solution, the Electrolyzer whisks up the ingredients with water to provide a gentle but powerful multi-purpose cleaner that can replace disinfectants, deodorizers, surface, bathroom and glass cleaners and lasts for two weeks.     Founder Mat Franklin (surprisingly not Aunt Fannie) is proud to prominently display the brand’s “No List” on the site laying out in great detail, the ingredients that you will not find in any of the brands products. The extensive offering includes probiotic cleaners and soaps, vinegar cleaners and even pest and mosquito solutions — all made from quality plant-based ingredients, probiotics and essential oils. Franklin prefers to leave “natural” out of the equation since the word itself can mean nothing and everything, all at once. You can read more about Aunt Fannie’s — and in turn, all cleaning products — here.     A theme you may be catching onto here is that products that are good for you and good for the earth are more often than not, good for your wallet too. Dropps makes laundry and dishwashing pods you can just drop(p) right in and go about your business. Made from eco-friendly ingredients, the detergent isn’t the only thing that is good for the earth. The water soluble pod membrane itself is made of polyvinyl alcohol (PVOH) which dissolves in your washer and enters the water stream eventually breaking down to water and carbon dioxide.       With one of the more comprehensive ingredient lists available for review, Common Good also happens to have the least amount of frill to its packaging — which is a big plus in our book. Given that most packaging is glass, and all is designed to be reused over and over again, if our mood or decour changes, this brand will still clean well while blending in perfectly.     Don’t want to ever run out of your all-purpose, glass or floor cleaner? You might want to consider Better Life, since you can buy five gallons at a time in recyclable boxes. The Better Life claim-to-fame is that its American-made formulas biodegrade up to five times faster than leading natural and conventional cleaners — meaning they are basically not just good for the environment, but they might be amazing.     Started after Kate Jakubas was studying for her Masters degree in Environmental Engineering and learned that cleaning ingredients didn’t have to be listed on products. Which, if you ask us, doesn't make a lick of sense. It didn’t to Jakubas either, so she formulated her own vegetable soap (as you do when you’re about to be a Environmental Engineer) and discovered she could offer better products that were rooted in simple ingredients. Now, these MADE SAFE certified, made-in-Chicago products are proof she was headed in the right direction.   Another bulk-to-go brand that makes keeping all your cleaning supplies on hand is Attitude. Sure, while it offers laundry detergent, dishwashing liquid and all-purpose cleaner in half gallon cardboard containers, it also gives you the option to tack on EWG Verified shampoo, shower gel and hand soap in bulk as well.     Call a truce on the fight between green and clean and use Dr. Diann Pert’s EWG Verified simple, safe cleaning products — Truce. (See what we did there?) The Truce mission is to not to wait until being told what to do, but rather doing what needs to be done to produce the best possible product.     If we could join a cult to have all of our products look this good, we probably would. Luckily it’s not necessary to abandon the non-believers and drink the Kool-Aid. Instead, you just have to buy the products and use them. The cleaners are great, but what we really, really love about this brand is the upscale design of the bottles themselves. The no-slip grip vessels are dishwasher safe and shatter resistant and the brand’s coconut derived formula is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).     Do you want to clean well? Then do we have a brand for you! (Sorry, we had to.) CleanWell products were born from a father's love for his son. After learning the use of household products loaded with unsafe chemicals made his son's life living with an immune system disorder even harder, he created his own products to use instead — CleanWell. Given its origin story, it would make sense that keeping concoctions kid-friendly would be a big goal, while also killing 99.9 percent of germs around the house and leaving a fresh lemongrass scent behind.     One bottle really can do it all, if that bottle is the Branch Basics Concentrate. By adding various amounts of water, depending on the cleaner’s purpose, the Concentrate can make up to three all-purpose bottles, three bathroom bottles, three glass cleaner bottles, three foaming hand wash bottles and 64 full loads of laundry. That’s a lot of clean out of one bottle of all-natural green goodness.     If there is a theme to the green clean movement, it’s parents wanting the best for their kids. Puracy is no exception. One of the best sellers in the category on Amazon, founders Sean Busch and Paul Tracy can sleep easy in their naturally clean houses knowing they are making the world a better place. But it’s not just Busch and Tracy that make Puracy a good brand to reach for, the team includes a Magna Cum Laude honored, American Board of Dermatology Double Board Certified dermatologist, a pediatric doctor of osteopathic medicine and a doctor of philosophy and chemistry from MIT. You know, just a few folks who might know a thing or two about how to make green, clean formulas safe enough for the whole family.   You can’t have a gathering of good-for-the-Earth cleaning products and not find Method somewhere amongst them. Sure, the scale of Method makes it hard to believe that it can keep up (or … down?) with the smaller guys, but it takes it’s accountability very seriously. With a mission to continue to provide affordable, green products to the masses, it’s working towards lowering carbon emissions, reducing water usage and hitting 99 percent diverted waste footprint by the end of 2020. Are they perfect? No. Are they better than most of the big brands you’re going to find while scrolling through Amazon — very likely.   These aren’t the only cleaning products out there with a mission to do a better job at keeping your home clean and the earth green, but they are all a great place to start. Whether you decision is based on budget or you’re a bit more bougie, the future holds only more great cleaning products for us all to enjoy.