A Zest for Life (Ecover Multi-Surface Cleaner)

Member Name: Whitehorse

Product:	Ecover Multi-Surface Cleaner
Date:	15/05/02 (465 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Environmentally friendly, Not tested on animals, Smells lovely

Disadvantages: None

In accordance with my general detox theme I found myself in the local wholefood shop the other week. Whilst wandering through the isles looking at stuff that occasionally didn’t actually look like food I found myself at the household products section.
Now I have to admit, some years back I tried using Ecover washing up liquid but it smelt horrible. After finishing the bottle I went back to using the cheapy Asda ‘kill the earth’ version. I’m not proud of this. I use animal/earth friendly make-up and I’m veggie so it feels wrong to be using anything that damages the environment. However having tried the washing up liquid, I hadn’t tried any of their other products.

Back in the store however, as I looked at the various household friendly cleaners I began to feel incredibly guilty and decided to give them a try once again - but I just didn’t want my house to stink like a compost heap. Therefore I furtively decided to sniff some of the bottles on display. This was a good idea in theory but unfortunately it lead to some strange looks from other customers and some hard stares from the sales staff who after 5 minutes or so thought I looked decidedly shifty. I paid for my stuff quickly before they started following me around the store.

Ecover set up shop in 1979. There aim is to use natural ingredients that are gentle on ALL life to make cleaning products that do the job as well (if not better) than other products on the market. There products (and the individual ingredients) are not tested on animals. Founder Frans Bogaerts began Ecover on a little farm in Belgium making phosphate free washing powder. I think he was quite the visionary as at this time there wasn’t a lot said about environmentally friendly products but Frans answered the whisper that would eventually become a roar of concern for planet earth.
His soap was sold through health food shops and as time went on, good marketing and earth fri
endly products got the attention of consumers. In 1992 the worlds first ecological factory was build to cope with the demand for more products. So not only is the product itself earth friendly, so is the factory it’s made in - now there’s a refreshing change!

The UN elected Ecover to the Global Roll of Honour for outstanding environmental achievement.

So - onto the cleaner itself. I bought a 500ml bottle for around £1.35 if I remember rightly. This multi-surface cleaner is designed to clean worktops, tiles, floors etc. I also used it to clean my whole bathroom. This one is a liquid cleaner - you don’t need to use a lot. Either use it neat on a damp sponge or dissolve in water for larger areas. It can be used in combination with Ecover Cream Cleaner.

The cleaner is made up of biodegradable plant material and sugar based ingredients. These are combined with vegetable soap, natural gum and essential oils. It smells wonderful! The smell is bright and fresh and makes me think of lemon or orange zest. I assume that this is the essential oils that I can smell. More importantly it doesn’t smell ‘chemical’ like other household cleaners even though it has a mild disinfectant action. I can never be bothered wearing marigolds and therefore my skin becomes really dry whenever I’m in cleaning mode. I didn’t find this at all with Ecover. It really is gentle on the hands (unlike that other brand that advertises itself as being gentle yet feels and smells like it’s made of caustic soda never mind belonging to some vast corporate organisation that rips off the consumer rant, rant, rant...).

My bathroom was really sparkly after I’d finished cleaning and smelt lovely - a real clean smell. Ecover is very effective and really does cut through grime and grease easily.

This isn’t one of the chainstores vague attempts to passify the consumer by offering so-called organic/environme
ntally friendly products that literally cost the earth. Ecover is the real deal from concept to factory to bottle to product - yes even the bottle it comes in is biodegradable.

I would definitely recommend giving this product a try. Not only does it do the job, it is friendly to the planet as a whole. If consumers put their foot down the larger companies will have to change their ways or be lost in the mists of time. People often feel that they have little or no power in society and when you look to the messy political world it certainly seems that way. However we have got power - the power to choose to buy only those products that do not destroy the planet we live on. The power to choose life.

For more information and a virtual tour around the Ecover factory go to
http://www.ecover.com/

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