CLEANING AT HOME

We use an average of five cleaners per household (kitchen, bathroom, furniture, glass, floor). That's five plastic bottles and almost 5L of water that need to be transported. 5 chemical products, which clean your house and dirty the water, the soil and you have to take care of your health (more if you suffer from allergies) as well as protect the most vulnerable (children and pets) about possible harmful effects. Access to these products is easy

But what's behind it?

We have been indoctrinated that we need specific cleaning products for each place and piece of furniture and that everything must be disinfected, as if it were necessary to disinfect every day. The truth is that disinfectants are biocides that eliminate all types of life, and this causes problems due to excessive cleaning and other negative effects.

Every day more and more companies like WeTKare are committed to improving consumption habits and today we are going to look at the importance of minimizing waste, eliminating chemicals, reducing water waste and CO2 emissions, and being a little more sustainable.

Being sustainable, that word so fashionable, is essential because ecology alone is insufficient and here WeTKare is one of those companies that looks beyond and together with it we will show the importance of taking into account the cost behind each product, and that this is not only economic; water, transportation, production of packaging, production of the product and a long etc. are present.

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In 1980, British epidemiologist David Strachan observed that, in the dirtier, more polluted and less wealthy cities of East Germany, children had much lower rates of hay fever and asthma than in the cleaner, wealthier cities of West Germany with their less social lifestyles with other children.

Since then other doctors have found that, in general, people in wealthier, more sanitized nations have much higher rates of asthma and allergies than those in the developing world. And while there may be other variants here it was observed that people who move from a developing country to a wealthier one have an more likely to develop these diseases than people who stay in their than people who remain in their country of origin.

This is why more and more physicians have hypothesized that we live in a modern, ultra-disinfected world in which too much cleanliness may be causing us to develop allergies, asthma, inflammatory bowel diseases and other autoimmune disorders.

Lack of exposure to bacteria, viruses and allergens prevents the normal development of the immune system, which ultimately increases the possibility of disorders within this system in the future. This is called the hygiene hypothesis.

Our immune system needs education, just like any other organ. Erika von Mutius, a pediatric allergist at the University of Munich suggests that early exposure to microbes helps in the education of a baby's developing immune system. Without this education, their immune system may be more prone to attack the wrong target, in the case of autoimmune diseases.

Here it is very important to differentiate. Excessive cleanliness is not related to not getting vaccinated and of course basic cleaning practices (infrastructure (infrastructure, water and garbage treatment, hand washing...) are necessary and prevent a large number of diseases.

True, it is not yet fully understood how the immune system develops as we grow, but the idea is that exposure is actually necessary for it to develop properly.

For the moment, the hygiene hypothesis remains a hypothesis: and no scientist believes it can explain all cases of allergies and asthma, but interactions between a person's environment and genes contribute to autoimmune disease rates.

None of this means you should stop cleaning your home or washing, or start drinking potentially contaminated water. And if you learn how to clean the dirt and sanitize without removing everything with biocides, mostly chemicals, which can be harmful to your health.

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We are going to classify cleaning products into 5 main categories and make a quick analysis of each one:

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Non-organic cleaning products.

Most or all of them are made of very aggressive and toxic chemicals. They clean, but often come at a high price because of the environmental and health impact they can cause due to chemical spills, poisoning and allergic reactions.

They are bottled in single-use plastics (producing each one of these bottles means an average of 3 - 4L of water) and have a formula composed of 10% chemicals and 90% water.

Its use is quite limited and after pouring the toxic content we throw away the plastic bottle to buy a new one.

Summary: We clean with a cleaner that pollutes and is likely to affect our health and the environment. We waste water in producing each bottle and once finished we dry rivers and springs to fill it with water and transport it. We emit tons of CO2 in producing bottles and packaging and transporting water, when the water transports itself...

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Do you consider it efficient?

Standard organic products

These products differ from the previous ones in that their components are less polluting.

However, they are still bottled in single-use plastic bottles and emit large amounts of CO2, in addition to being a significant waste of water as we saw earlier. And they have the same ratio of 10% cleaning product and 90% water.

- Bulk organic products

Here we begin to see some change. The vast majority are organic and there may be times when they are not.

They are transported in large quantities, (from about 5L) still with the same proportion (10-90%), to a point of sale, to which each customer must go with his bottle to refill with the product you need.

This can mean huge savings in plastic bottles and other materials, but there is still a large amount of CO2 emissions to transport these drums in addition to the aforementioned waste of water.

- Organic single-dose products

This model is gaining more and more followers every day. In this case, 90% of the water is eliminated and the customer purchases only 10% of the cleaning product in tablet or liquid form.

Many of these products are eco-friendly, although there may be exceptions. Here we highlight the great savings in the production of single-use plastic bottles, reduction of CO2 emissions and water waste.

However, what is not taken into account is the cost of producing each of the wrappers for each dose and the cost of producing each dose, which are quite high. And here we are talking about the economic cost, energy cost and production cost (e.g. machinery needed).

- Homemade cleaning products

These products are usually the most environmentally friendly as they are mainly made from 100% natural products; vinegar, baking soda, lemon, soda, natural oils, plants...

But what is the cost of producing each of these components? What is the cost of producing the packaging for each one? Do we take advantage of 100%?

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As we saw above the costs behind each cleaning product, we will now look at the economic cost perceived by the customer.

How do you commute to work every day? If you use public transport, do you pay for your individual ticket every day, or do you prefer to pay for a monthly or quarterly pass?

Most of us who use public transport use a season ticket, for the simple reason that paying individual tickets in the medium and long term is a much higher cost. The same is true for the car versus getting around by cab on a daily basis.

Supermarkets and most stores offer cleaning products for an average (depending on brands and characteristics) from 1€ to 4€ and 5€. We also have products that are purchased online mostly taking advantage of the single-dose model with an average of 1.50 € dose.

We will take an overall average price of €2.5 per cleaning product. If at home you use, as we indicated at the beginning, about five products (kitchen, bathroom, furniture, glass and floor) we will have an average expenditure of 12.5 €. Not counting specific products for different types of wood, furniture, floors, bleach, etc.

How much do you think you spend on cleaning products?

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Conclusion

In 2019 in Spain, only in household cleaning products, the expenditure was 225 million euros and since 2020 its consumption increased by more than 20% making each citizen spend more than 90€ in cleaning products in a single year.

We like to enjoy a clean home and to be able to visit places where we are comfortable. As we have seen and know, cleanliness is fundamental, without a doubt, and at the same time we have to take into account that this cleanliness respects our health and the environment.

Each cleaning product has its pros and cons, but we have in our hands the possibility to choose the most respectful and best suited to us.

WeTKare are cleaning products with such a concentrated formula, that the five cleaning products mentioned (kitchen, bathroom, furniture, glass and floors) and some more 😉 have managed to agglutinate them in only two bottles, with a duration of easily one year. WeTKare Multi-surfaces offers between 50 and 100 cleaning sprayers, simply dilute the appropriate dose in each of its aluminum sprayers, add water and clean as normal. Its 250ml floor cleaner provides up to 250 buckets of water. It's like having bulk cleaning at home in the smallest space.

Every simple gesture counts, avoid food waste, use sustainable cleaning, reuse your bag....

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