Even though automatic dishwashers are often the most eco-friendly option, requiring less energy and water than hand washing,  sometimes you need to clean up by hand. But traditional dishwashing liquids can leave chemical residue on your plates, glasses, pots and pans–the very things you eat off of every day! Not to mention where those chemicals go after they get washed down the drain–those bad ingredients can make their way into waterways, impacting aquatic life.That same chemical residue gets left on your hands, too. Dishpan hands are in part, due to the drying, harsh detergents found in dishwashing liquid.

So start combating dirty dishes with some more natural. Ecover Dishwashing Liquid is a one such eco product. The formula is biodegradable so it’s gentle on the environment and your hands. In fact, the Chamomile & Marigold variety soothes hands with milk whey. Ecover recently launched a new fragrance: Grapefruit and Green Tea. The scent comes from plant based ingredients rather than synthetics and the Green Tea extract can help eliminate odors naturally.

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If you’ve been spraying, spritzing and shellacking the strongest cleaners you can find all around the house, it’s time to rethink clean. Many of us have the idea that the products that work the best for getting rid of dirt and grime are the ones with the longest chemical names, when, in reality, some of those cleaners may be worse for us than what we’re trying to clean up. In fact, harsh, un-natural cleaning products are part of the reason our indoor air quality is worse than outdoor air quality. What’s worse is that some of the potentially toxic chemicals in certain cleaning products are now being found in the bloodstream of newborns–a very real indication that what we’re cleaning with does have an effect on us and those around us.

Perhaps the silliest part of the way we clean now is that there are plenty of naturally-based alternatives that would get our homes just as clean, smell great, and won’t adversely alter our health. The trick is finding out what they are and how to use them right…and that’s where Squeaky Green: The Method Guide to Detoxing Your Home ($11.53 from Amazon.com) comes in. Written by Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, the founders of the popular natural cleaning brand Method, Squeaky Green gives you the dirt on conventional cleaners with a bevy of (scary) facts and then takes you through your home, room by room, on a mission of greener cleaning. It will help you understand why you should avoid certain products, what you should look for in others and actually keep you entertained throughout with its easy-to-read format. Click here to read more

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Is there a bigger celebrity than Oprah? Throughout the U.S. viewers tune in to hear–and act upon–her thoughts. She says “jump”, we say “how high?”; she says “read a book”, we say “which one?”; she mentions she has favorite things, we say “tell us, tell us!”. And, if we’re really lucky, we see her in person on the day she’s giving away free cars.

But now Oprah is adding the environment to her list of favorite things and she recently devoted an entire episode to getting greener. She covered things like switching to reusable water bottles and reusable grocery bags (we’re definitely with you on that, Oprah) and getting your name off of junk mailing lists to lessen paper use. And when it came time to cover cleaning green, Oprah was all about Seventh Generation cleaning products (with Method and Mrs. Meyer’s also being endorsed). She even brought a family whose son suffered from severe asthma problems on and discussed how the use of green cleaners had cleared up his ailments. Click here to read more

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As the world starts to focus on going green, we’re finding that often this means going back to the natural solutions of years long gone. And often this results in discovering methods of doing things that actually work better than some of our current choices. This is the case with the Bamboo Pot Scrapers available from GreenFeet.

Instead of tapping manmade materials like plastic and steel wool, these pot scrapers utilize highly renewable bamboo. Organically grown bamboo, to be specific–a wonder-grass that can be put to work for culinary, medicinal and household purposes and then bounces back in true renewable form. The Bamboo Pot Scrapers, which are each made of a single, solid piece of bamboo, do a great job of sloughing off food from your pots and pans without taking their surfaces off too. Click here to read more

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Most conventional wood floor cleaners contain harsh chemicals linked with a host of adverse health effects. Wood cleaners often contain 2-butoxyethanol, which can depress the central nervous system and can irritate; isopropanol, which can irritate the skin and the upper respiratory tract; and ammonia, which can irritate or damage the lungs. Conventional cleaners also often contain synthetic fragrance, which means that they usually have phthalates to sustain the fragrance. Phthalates are endocrine disruptors (also called hormonally active agents) and have been linked to adverse health effects in rodent studies. Elevated concentrations of phthalates in household have been linked with asthma and allergic symptoms in children.

An option to replace those conventional cleaners that we like is Method’s o-Mop Wood for Good Floor Cleaner in Almond, $8. Wood for Good Floor Cleaner is free of 2-butoxyethanol, isopropanol, and ammonia. Click here to read more

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