Supermarket shelves are positively groaning under the weight of cleaning products for floors, ovens, sinks, tiles, lavatories, bathrooms and drains and as for the laundry...well, it seems you can get a product for every conceivable item of clothing you own. Manufacturers would have us believe that all these products are both essential and super-efficient for keeping our homes clean. In reality, the vast majority are not really needed and, whats more, their manufacture and use can be devastating to the environment. At Fonte de Baixo we are very careful what we and our guests use as our waste water system is used to irrigate our fruit trees through our grey-water system or our waste goes into our bio-filtration black-water system which irrigates the meadow at a depth of two meters. There are greener alternatives: brands such as Ecover and Method that are available but not here in Portugal unless we would like to drive a round journey of 70 kilometres which means the product is no longer green. We use what is already in our cupboard and cleans just as well as many products sold at a considerable higher price - the only thing needed is a little elbow grease; my bulging waist line can handle the challenge.
Just because something is natural doesn't mean it is harmless: water hemlock, fly agaric mushrooms, arsenic and mercury are all natural substances and plants but you wouldn't want them in your home or to eat them! When it comes to the vast majority of commercially produced cleaning products, all of them (even a simple bar of soap for washing your hands) contain harmful chemicals that will end up going down the drain (in our case into the soil) and into the rivers, lakes and finally the oceans.