Surfactants

In addition to replacing all the skin care products in our home with miessence, I also replaced all of our cleaning products with Mrs. Meyer’s. There were several reasons that I chose this brand, but I have to confess that a major one is the fact that it SMELLS AMAZING. The four main scents are Basil, Lemon Verbena, Lavender, and Geranium. I love love love the smell of fresh cut grass – and the Basil scent is the equivalent of that – not so much a strong or sweet basil scent as you would think, but more of a parsley – fresh, light, but still lingering fragrance. Another reason I chose Mrs. Meyer’s was because of the extensive selection, which includes laundry detergent, fabric softener and dryer sheets. Always the online bargain shopper, I’ve found the best place to purchase Mrs. Meyer’s is on drugstore.com during sales, or in bulk from Amazon. For an extremely detailed review of the counter top spray and its environmentally friendliness go here.

However, Mrs. Meyer’s products are not organic. The ingredients on the countertop spray are below:

• Deionized water, plant derived surfactant, chelating agent (non-EDTA), builders (non phosphate), essential oils of basil, parsley and black pepper, essential oils of eucalyptus golbus leaf and cedarwood, fragrance, vegetable protein extract, citric acid, solubolizing agents, preservative.

Plant derived… ok, essential oils… good, fragrance, hmm that’s bad. My big question is what the heck surfactants are. According to the Mrs. Meyer’s website – “We use naturally derived ingredients whenever possible from corn, sugar cane, coconut and palm. When we cannot find a plant-derived ingredient that performs to our rigorous standards, we use ingredients from the world of safe synthetics. These are materials with a long history of safety and efficacy in use for people and the environment they live in.”

I still want to know what surfactants are. According to Science in a Box, “A surfactant or surface active agent is a substance that, when dissolved in water, gives a product the ability to remove dirt from surfaces such as the human skin, textiles, and other solids.” Basically it’s a molecule with one end that grabs the dirt and one end that grabs the water in order to pull the dirt from the counter top, clothes, hands, etc. They can be either natural (vegetable or animal) or synthetic (petroleum). So Mrs. Meyer’s is stating that they use a safe, renewable resource and specifically plant derived, so not involving animals. As far as cleaning power goes – their products seem to work great.

Deionized water means it’s been de-mineralized. Apparently EDTA and phosphates are bad, since they specifically mention that they are not using them. I also want to know what solubilizing agents are, but I think those ingredients will have to be researched in another post. ONEgroup has a MiEnviron line of probiotic household cleaning products that I have yet to try, but for fragrance, variety and selection I think I will have to find out something pretty horrible about Mrs. Meyers to stop purchasing their products. More info in posts to come…