Thinking of giving your kitchen the once-over? Or maybe it’s time for an intense deep clean? When it comes to food hygiene you can’t be too careful, but it’s a tricky balancing act – sometimes the most powerful cleaning agents are also the ones that damage the environment most.
Here’s our top picks for kitchen cleaning products that are both ethical and highly effective.
Surfaces
Cleaning your countertops isn’t the most complicated task, but it’s important to use the right tool for the job. Daily kitchen cleaner from Method is non-toxic and gentle enough for everyday use – you don’t even need to rinse afterwards. For something a bit more potent, there’s Ecozone’s kitchen cleaner, which delivers the requisite cleaning power with a plant-based, vegan-friendly formula.
Kitchen towels
It’s easy to overlook the environmental impact of kitchen towels. They’re used and discarded so quickly, you might not think about the amount of water needed for production, or the number of trees being felled. Ecoleaf’s recycled kitchen roll is a more eco-friendly alternative, and Who Gives A Crap have branched out from toilet paper to offer a fully recycled option too.
Or eliminate the need for trees altogether with Cheeky Panda’s bamboo kitchen roll. Bamboo grows 20-30 times faster than trees and produce more oxygen to boot, making it a more sustainable crop all round. Eco Green Living and Ecoegg even produce bamboo kitchen towels that can be washed and re-used multiple times, decreasing waste even further.
Oven & hob
It’s probably not your favourite chore, but cleaning the oven doesn’t have to be an ordeal. Ecover oven & hob cleaner’s cruelty-free formula makes short work of burnt-on food – there’s also Miniml’s oven & hob cleaner made with 99.5% natural ingredients. Induction hob? Delphis has you covered with a vegan-friendly, sustainably-sourced cleaner that also works a treat on ceramic surfaces.
Rubber gloves
A good pair of rubber gloves can ease the strain of almost any kitchen chore. Be careful though – they’re often sneakily made from synthetic materials and end up languishing for years in landfill. Traidcraft and Fair Zone both produce gloves made from natural, fairly traded rubber with a cotton lining for extra comfort. Ecoliving’s rubber gloves are biodegradable and compostable once you’re finished with them, while Seep’s come in small, medium and large for ease of use.
Washing up
Even something as simple as washing up with a plastic sponge can release large amounts of microplastics into the local ecosystem. Try our eco-friendly alternatives instead. Ecoliving’s dish brush comes with a hard-wearing replaceable head to minimise waste (also sold separately). Need to get into a tight space? The biodegradable coir bristles of a Loofco bottle brush will do the trick.
When it comes to washing-up liquid, it’s the single-use bottles you have to watch out for. Thankfully, some of our favourite brands offer a reusable bottle and refill packs to limit the amount of waste. Grab a Bower Collective glass pump dispenser, for example, and you can refill it with recyclable pouches of pomegranate washing-up liquid as many times as you like. Miniml washing-up liquid bottles can be sent back to the manufacturer for reuse free of charge when you’re finished with them.
Drains
Unpleasant drain smells and blockages require powerful solutions, but anything you chuck down there will end up in waterways eventually – so make sure it’s nothing that’ll harm aquatic life or disrupt the ecosystem. Try a natural enzymatic product like Ecozone’s drain unblocker or cleaning sticks, or the bacteria-based cleaning power of Delphis eco drain cleaner.