The market is slowly, but steadily seeing a shift towards an increase in demand for natural and organic products. While it may seem as a fad, yet it comes with its own iceberg. What lies below this surface is the climate crisis, global warming, increase in superbugs and sudden increase in diseases like cancer. And all of these are more inter-linked than is visible to the eye. One such category that is seeing a demand, and is actually a much needed alternative – is the category of natural cleaners.
Why Say No To Synthetic Cleaners?
It’s an irony that the products that are supposed to clean, end up dirtying our environment, in ways more than one. Visualize this – An urban Indian household, on an average, uses atleast 12 different kinds of cleaning products. Most of which contain strong and synthetic chemicals. Now, let’s look at the entire value chain of these products. Think of a laundry detergent –
Step 1: Production – While this seemingly harmless laundry cleaner is being made in the factory, apart from consuming a lot of resources and polluting air, water and soil in form of residues, the production process leads to emission of toxins that are responsible for massive air pollution. Which further leads to severe respiratory diseases and hormonal imbalances.
Step 2 : Consumption – The process of production to delivery at your doorstep, or shop, in the plastic bottles, leaves far more carbon footprint than the actual consumption. Add to that, the residual toxins that eventually run through our drainage systems can infiltrate the water we use. In order to clean this water, ETP plants use more chemicals to remove the existing chemicals. This ends up consuming a lot of resources and energy, and renders a lot of water useless. In a country, that has been declared high on the risk of a potential water crisis. Worse than this is, given our limited resources, often times grey water is diverted to farms to be used in irrigation. All these harsh chemicals are often absorbed by the plants, and in return, pollute the food we consume.
Step 3: Post consumption – According to statistics India generates 62 millions tonnes of waste each year. Lot of this waste ends up in landfills and wrecks our ecosystems. We have been blessed with a lot of natural resources and beauty. But now, most of our hills, beaches, lakes (case in point – Bangalore) are either drying up, or have huge dumps of waste. Covering up landfill as a park isn’t a sustainable option. It does take care of these garbage mountains not being an eye-sore. But doesn’t prevent the release of harmful gases in the air, or slow percolation of harmful acid from landfills in the water table, and other water bodies.
Why Natural Cleaners?
Natural or eco-friendly cleaners are friendly to the planet during production, usage and post. They actually help the farmlands/ planet. These products are mostly sustainable and recyclable. These cleaning products do not contain harmful chemicals, use minimal energy during production. What’s more, the grey water when pumped in sewage, helps in deblocking, and repelling pests and killing microbes and harmful bacteria.
At their best, they follow circular product and economic design principles to ensure a healthy and a sustainable product.
By Shruti Taneja,‘voice’ of Berry Clean