Option
The Greenpeace market check examined cleaning agents from Austrian drugstores and supermarkets. The result is clear: two thirds of the products on the shelves are unnecessary and some contain chemicals that are dangerous for people and the environment. Greenpeace recommends when buying on trusted quality mark to respect, such as “Eco-Garantie” and the “Austrian Ecolabel”. The ranking of the Greenpeace market check leads Müller in the drugstores and Interspar in the supermarkets with "very good".
"You don't need more than three products for a clean household, namely all-purpose cleaners, scouring agents and vinegar-based cleaners. In order to protect the environment and your own health, you should only use cleaning products with a trustworthy quality mark," says Lisa Panhuber, consumer expert at Greenpeace Austria. More than 100 different cleaning agents are stacked up on the supermarket shelves, but consumers can confidently do without two thirds of them. Many of the chemicals in common cleaning products are harmful to the environment. If, for example, preservatives get into the wastewater, they are toxic to aquatic organisms and hardly biodegradable. Products with fragrances are generally not recommended because they irritate the skin and respiratory tract and are therefore harmful to health. Hygiene products for disinfection can trigger allergies and are not necessary in the household. Greenpeace criticizes toilet blocks as being particularly pointless and harmful to the environment: They don't really clean the toilet, they just mask unpleasant odours. In addition, the environmentally hazardous substances get directly into the waste water with every wash cycle.
Greenpeace recommends using cleaning agents more sparingly and looking for trustworthy, independent quality marks on the products: These include the “Eco-Garantie” mark evaluated in the Greenpeace guide Sign-Tricks II, the state “Austrian Eco-Label”, the “EU-Ecolabel ” or “Ecocert”. But the Greenpeace market check shows that, for example, only 20 percent of all all-purpose cleaners carry a trustworthy quality mark.
ALL QUALITY SEALS AT A GLANCE:
Photo / Video: Greenpeace.
