Green Cleaning Products Best

Our 10 year old granddaughter's science fair exhibit is the topic today. She wondered if all the hype about green cleaning products was just hype, or if there was really something to it.

My idea of cleaning windows is to use vinegar and water, and wipe with newsprint. Works better than most commercial products, costs less, and is easy to find lying around the house. Vinegar also works just fine on mirrors and any glass or porcelain surfaces.

But back to the science project. She used white porcelain floor tiles, and smeared them all with ketchup, mustard, dirt, and black markers. Then she scrubbed each tile with several regular commercial cleaning products, and also with several brands of "green" cleaning products. All the products are available at major grocery stores.

Her findings were that the green cleaning products cleaned faster and took off more grime than the regular products did. The price for the green products was only slightly more than regular ones, but the ease of cleaning, a cleaner job, and less time to scrub, more than outweighed the extra cost.

And she got an A+ on the project. If we teach our younger generation about saving the planet, maybe we can actually save the planet.