Did you know that cleaning our offices, schools, child care centres, stores and warehouses can contribute to Global Warming and should be reviewed as we seek to become more green and sustainable?orangutan1

And do you know that cleaning our offices, schools, child care centres, stores and warehouses is most likely harming people?

Let’s be clear on the problem first.

Most cleaning products are transported diluted.  Most cleaning products contain 90% or more water. Even those products that claim to be concentrated often contain more than 50% water.

An average large company in Australia can use up to 400,000 litres of cleaning products each year. This 400,000 litres of cleaning products can contain up to least 360,000 litres of water.

Just think about the carbon used to transport all that water round Australia each and every year and that’s just for one company…

Yet the thing is cleaning products can be diluted using tap water at the point where the products are used – saving 90% or more of the planet warming CO2 being unnecessarily pumped out.  Earth Renewable is a range of super-concentrated cleaning products that are diluted at point of use at a ratio of 1 part cleaning chemical to 92 parts tap water.

Are you using super concentrated cleaning products or are you contributing to global warming for no good reason?

The answer is Earth Renewable but first what about the 10% of the cleaning product that is not water…

Green Cleaning: By the Numbers

17,000: the number of petrochemicals available for use in commercial cleaning products, only 30 percent of which have been tested for exposure to human health and the environment.  And many of the ones that have been tested are toxic or carcinogenic. (source US EPA)

63: the number of synthetic chemicals found in the average office.  (source US EPA)

100: the number of times higher that indoor office air pollution levels can be above outdoor air pollution levels, according to US EPA figures. The majority of indoor office air pollution comes from volatile organic compounds released into the air when toxic cleaning products are used. (source US EPA)

275: the number of active ingredients in antimicrobials used for cleaning that the US EPA classifies as pesticides or poisons because they are designed to kill microbes. And these are used to clean surfaces that you touch in the office every day. (source US EPA)

As well as this horror story, most cleaning products are jam packed with volatile organic compounds (VOCs).  VOCs are released into the air when the product is used – and they stay there.  This is a major contributor to indoor air pollution which worsens asthma, causes skin and lung irritations and makes people feel generally unwell.

The answer is Earth Renewable.

Earth Renewable products are fully environmentally certified right here in Australia as being environmentally friendly as is work place and our working practices and working on “Cleaning for Health” solutions .

Earth Renwable is made in Australia by an Australian company.

Earth Renewable is super concentrated to minimise CO2 emissions in transportation.

Earth Renewable products are free of all volatile organic compounds, free of any known carciogens and free of all known toxins.

Who Is Using Earth Renewable Products?

Earth Renewable products are used to clean:

 

    • Many Target Stores in Australia

 

    • Outdoor areas at the Sydney Opera House

 

    • Many of Queensland’s largest private schools

 

 

These are just some of the many locations that you will find are healthier and supporting the environment by using Earth Renewable cleaning products.

Earth Renewable and Palm Oil – what’s the big deal?

In our ongoing quest to make our products the most sustainable and natural cleaning products available, we are continually working up and down our supply chain to ensure that the ingredients in every Earth Renewable product are not just less bad for people and the planet, but are truly good.

That’s why we are pleased to be the first cleaning chemical company in Australia to tackle the issue of destructive palm oil production and its effect on tropical rainforests.

So, what is palm oil?  And what does palm oil have to do with cleaning products?  Well, the little-known truth is that around 50% of the products on your local grocery store shelf contain palm oil.  And in fact, most (at least 90%) of the cleaning products use palm kernel oil, or one of its direct derivatives, in the production of surfactants.  Surfactants are one of the main active ingredients in most cleaning products.

The ugly side of growing palm is that, in order to make way for large-scale plantations, vast tracks of old growth rainforest in places like Indonesia and Borneo have been clear cut. As the global demand for palm oil skyrocketed over the last 20 years (with an almost six fold increase in production), deforestation has continued on an epic scale. It’s a ticking environmental time bomb.

Scientists refer to tropical forests as the lungs of our planet.  We pump out ever increasing quantities of CO2 — the most prevalent global warming causing greenhouse gas — and our tropical forests act like giant planet scrubbers, sucking C02 out of the atmosphere and locking it away deep inside the forests.

As more and more rainforests are clearcut to make room for palm oil plantations the deforestation releases vast quanties of CO2 that have been locked away in the forests for centuries, significantly adding to the growing global warming threat.  The problem has become so acute that 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions comes from deforestation, more than all emissions from the transportation sector.

In addition to being a climate change time bomb, tropical deforestation also deprives some of the world’s most endangered species (such as orangutans, elephants, and tigers) of their key habitats. As habitats are lost to palm oil production and without immediate intervention, these species face almost certain extinction. Without a change in forest practices in Indonesia, Borneo and Malaysia, it is likely that orangutans will disappear in the next five years.

Earth Renewable has worked with our suppliers to ensure that no palm oil used in our Earth Renewable products come from plantations in Indonesia or Borneo and we can provide certification to that effect.

This is just one of the ways that are continuing to strive to bring true environmental awareness and behavioural change to the cleaning chemical business.