Our cleaning cabinets can contain a laundry list of toxic chemicals and heaps of single-use plastic.
"Most cleaning products are used fleetingly, then washed away down the plughole,” says Anna Turns, environmental journalist and author of Go Toxic Free. “Many toxic ingredients won’t easily degrade,” and once in the sea, they can “accumulate inside plants and animals” and “harm and disrupt hormone function of wildlife and of us”. The manufacture of these ingredients also has an “environmental cost”, she says. So simply using less of any cleaning product is one of the best things we can do, advises Francesca Ginley, chemicals expert at Marine Conservation Society.
