For those who are into saving the planet I find it strange that so few of you are seen jumping up and down about toilet cleaners and what they are doing when they reach the sea.
This morning I used a "spray on bowl" cleaner and it stung my nose. What, I wondered, would it be doing to the fish?
My friend down the road uses a blue goopy thing in a plastic bracket on the side of her bowl and, seriously, it looks so thick at the water level of the bowl, one could stand a spoon up in the mixture.
Does anyone know what goes down the toilet in chemical form?
Do they filter it out?
Do we think the Greenies will ever tackle to chemical corps on this issue?
I cant in all conscience use that product again.
Any ideas on good products?
Maybe I should just use salt and hot water.

Antyhing Eco-friendly is exy as hell (for some reason). So much rubbish out there before you can come across a decent one. Home made stuff is rubbish...in my experience.

Everything ends up in the water, and if they're considering recycling that 'water' then we'd better start considering what we're dumping down the dunny.

Try breathing in 'Exit Mould'.

No thanks on the "Exit Mould" StG.
I never really liked chemical companies.
They never seemed to move all that far away from the gross like Zyklon b.

You will find that dedicated greenies only scrub out the toilet bowl and pour vinegar down the toilet.

I try to squirt Domestos around the rim once a week and let the chlorine work its magic for 8 hours, confident that the sewerage works is working properly. In these days of privatisation and failure to invest in infrastructure that might be a false assumption.

Gibo what a good idea to create a thread on environmentally-friendly products.

I have taken a lot of cleaning advice from my late grandmother, who has always been a ‘greenie’ ever before the word was invented. Her house always smelled so fresh and clean.
She made most of her own cleaning products from basics like pure soap flakes, baking soda, white vinegar, washing soda, salt, borax, lemon oil, eucalyptus oil, (this makes a good disinfectant and many insects hate it), mineral oil, grapefruitseed extract (also a disinfectant). I use tea tree oil as well.
If you google ‘homemade environmentally-friendly products’ you will find some useful recipes.

I subscribe to this newsletter http://www.greenlivingtips.com/ which can be helpful as well.

What I also like is the micro fibre cleaning cloths and sponges now on the market; these make cleaning so much easier and some clean without the use of cleaning products at all

Aah...Celivia...thanx for that. How lost we are becoming.. or rather how much precious knowledge about such simple and more natural ways of doing things is being lost.

I'll note all those things now :) and add them to my 'survivalist' to-do list :) *grin*

Eucalyptus oil.. what a wonderful natural ingredient.. some times when my nose is blocked when going for a walk, I grab a few leaves from a tree, crush them up and sniff them..works wonders.

How would you know, Boazy? Isn't cleaning toilets women's work under God's great plan for male/female complementarity?

Pray tell, when did Boazy last clean the family toilet?

Serendipity. We had a family discussion about toilet cleaning last night but the product under scrutiny was Coca Cola. Apparently does a brilliant job and is commonly used by commercial cleaners. Lovely.
We never resolved the question of its impact on the environment, but it would probably fall somewhere between vinegar and bleach.

A plumber friend recently warned us that those blocks you stick in the cistern perish the rubber fittings.

One proposal that emerged from discussions was that if men learned to sit and pee there'd be less mess to clean up in the first place, which turned out to be a controversial suggestion.

"I'll note all those things now :) and add them to my 'survivalist' to-do list :) *grin*"
Heheheh CJ, he didn't say 'when'.

But yes, BD I just love the smell of eucalyptus, just add a few drops when you (yeah, YOU) mop the kitchen floor or clean the benches.
Tape it and we'll watcha on YouTube :))
Nah, no pressure here, but honestly, cleaning with natural products is much less of a chore, only because the smell is so nice and it feels good, too, to know that you are not contributing to the pollution of our precious water.

In fact, I love essential oils and use them every day, also in my face cream and body lotion.

Oops, we were talking about toilets...

Ah, Chainsmoker I bet the toilet would be really sparkling clean if you poured a bottle of coke in the bowl and then tossed some mentos in:)
Run, run!

Celivia

My European grandmother was much the same as yours and used natural ingredients in her home. She refused to use chemicals and she lived to well in her 90s (maybe for other reasons too - she used to drink chammomile tea and do something with nettles as well). :)

It is a shame that these old remedies are seen as new fangled 'green' products when really they have been around a long time and it took a while to trust these non-chemical agents but now it is the norm. I could not quite believe that unless I 'nuked' the toilet with chemicals it would not be really clean.

One whiff of Domestos or Exit Mould is enough to convince me now. :)

Celivia

I have this mental image of a bubbling loo I can't get out of my head - too funny.

We have been duped into buying stuff we didn't really need and would hurt the environment.

Medicos believe that the increasing incidence of asthma is due to children never really developing proper immunity to their environment. My little cousins run wild in natural bushland, drink only tank-water and are as healthy as kids have every right to be.

BTW Men with a good aim don't need to sit down, but please don't shake, use toilet paper, please, please, please.

PS

I have to try out the coca-cola though - hate cleaning the toilet.

I put greenlivingtips in favorites. The cleaning chemicals seem to be more simple than the usual ones in the shops. I checked that what they call baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, sodi bic to my mother which is not baking powder. She used baking powder in cakes, sifted into plain flower. That was before self-raising flour was available. Baking powder had sodi bic and cream of tartar--Potassium hydrogen tartrate (google). My old tin says sodi bic and phosphate aerator. Sodi bic went into soda bread. But we have to remember that a lot of sodium goes down the waterways--sodium bicarbonate, washing soda-- sodium hydroxide, bleach-- sodium hyperchlorite, soap--oil and caustic soda--sodium hydroxide, salt (as cleaner), sodium chloride . Add to this is what goes through us into the toilet--salt, soda drinks etc. We need to make sure that our waste water is highly refined and separated back into useful constituents,or reused, or treated by passing through to soil and plants so that microbes can work their complex chemistry to restore it to a clean state. Conceptually we should think from toilet/sink to sewage farm, ie "beyond the gully trap".

I think that those who are really interested in this subject (as I am, moderately) could do far worse than to get hold of a couple of books by the wonderfully-named Shannon Lush and Jennifer Fleming: "Spotless" and "Speed Cleaning". I have listened to Ms Lush's quite folksy cleaning solutions on ABC radio for some years now, and I have to say that there's much to be said for white vinegar and 'carb soda' (as my dear old Mum used to call it). Throw in some lavender or something to make it smell nice, and everything's sparkling and sweet-smelling and you haven't asphyxiated in the process :)

Actually, in our little business we sold a 'healthy number' of those books last Xmas, so people are obviously interested in alternatives to chlorine-based cleaners and other household poisons. Having said that, I'm also conscious of the evils of sodium - but I guess it boils down to having as clean a toilet (or kitchen, or whatever) as possible while trying to minimise one's impact further downstream, as it were.

Nice topic, Gibo. Your best yet :)

Thanks to all of you for your toilet suggestions.
Coca cola seems a bit expensive though I may get to a cheaper version of cola.
Im currently using a slosh over of hot water from the bathroom sink next to the toilet bowl with a bit of Homebrand hand wash which washes away the pee but doesnt really disinfect as I would like.
Not buying commercial toilet cleaners would save me a lot of money each year so Im going to stay away.
I keep getting this feeling we're being persecuted by chemical companies with all this blue goo from toilet cradles holders going down the toilet.
Its as if the majority of people want to save the planet but here we have the chem corps doing the opposite by encouraging their products, as Creation dies. And theyre getting away with it.

Right; well here's my contribution:

White vinegar/carb soda (right CJ!) are it! Maybe add Epsom salts to your cupboard. That's all you need for most all things in the hoosie!
(Oh yes;- and soft soap).

Last visitor of the day; slosh a fair slug of vinegar down the pan. EVERY night. You will hardly ever,-if at all!,-need to clean the toily pan.
Spray w/vin on the shower tiles 'bout 30 minutes before your shower,-tiles don't go black in grout area.
Use soft soap for hands/shower,-NOT soap. No scummy build-up. I have never 'cleaned' my bathroom sink in over a decade.
Pour some carb down your plug-holes and then some vin. The 'chemical' reaction clears the drain, pour hot water in after 20 mins or so.
..oooh I could go on...!

Soft soap IS more expensive than soap ('orrible stuff!). Buy $2 large bottles of shampoo from yer five and dime. Decant 60% shamp/40% water. Muchos cheaper.

White vinegar?, well it IS cheap, but tha can make it half the price. Decant half into another bottle, then top both up with warm water and shake. Leave a couple of weeks and they will come back up to strength.

I know I've wandered a bit Gibo, but I do love a good little tiportwo!!

Ginx you and Celivia are bloomin' brilliant.

Hate housework - love your advice.

If this hasn't already been mentioned you can also use vinegar and water - spray mixture on your windows, mirrors and wipe dry with newspaper - no residue, sparkly clean, recycles newspaper, 'cos you can then layer newspaper under mulch in garden where you want a more acid soil and this prevents weeds but allows soil to breath.

:-)

Hi Ginx,
I didn’t know that diluted vinegar will come back up to strength. Intriguing!

Pelican,
Awww, your grandmother sounds cute. Mine also lived to 93 in good health. She not only used natural cleaning products and beauty products, she also refused to use plastic bags. She brought her own containers to the deli.

She made her own very nice smelling rosewater and lavender water by soaking the petals/flowers she picked from her garden and used them for her skin and sprayed them around the house. Bottles of those waters made welcome Christmas presents, too!
Grannies- don’t we love them!

Fractelle,
yes vinegar is excellent for cleaning mirrors and windows. I hadn’t thought about using the papers in the garden- thanks.
My husband has a wormfarm -yes eeeeeuw- and uses newspaper in there as well.
Not sure if worms like the taste of vinegar though, hehe. I can imagine their scrunched-up faces.

“We have been duped into buying stuff we didn't really need…”
that’s so true. We’ve been brainwashed into thinking that cleaning with expensive, chemical products is more convenient, quicker and easier. We are told that this or that kills 99% of the germs so we need it.
But there are MANY natural products that kill germs just as well. All these chemicals are an attack on our health and especially on our children’s health.

Women are also being told that they need all these (very expensive) creams, lotions and potions- because we’re worth it. These creams are full of chemicals, artificial fragrances, preservatives that are not beneficial for our skin at all. All we need is a very basic moisturiser and sun cream for outside. I add my own, oh so beautifully smelling essential oils to the bases. I buy my products from a wholesaler once a year and mix-and-match the products to suit my needs. I don’t need perfumes- the natural oils smell much nicer, I think.

Thanks for those book titles, CJ, I’ll certainly check them out.

Celivia, I bought a ragged old housekeeping book in a sale. The author of the vinegar tip said her grandmother gave it to her,-so we're talking a pretty ancient tip!

I've been decanting/topping up for about 8 years now;-the vinegar is weak on first whiff, but does get stronger the longer you leave it.

I use it for most things.

Fractelle, I like your tip. Most every degradable goes on my garden. I haven't the space for a composter so onto the garden it all goes. The cardboard wrapping of a shelf unit, fridge, and whatall, have now degraded into the soil! Currently a feather quilt is nicely disintegrating and some herbs are enjoying a warm brown-ish fuzzy!

Ginx, thank you, I will give the vinegar a go; will google to find out how it works since I'm curious.

I'd never have thought of burrying a feather quilt- that's a great idea!

Now we're on this topic, pretty please, does any of you know how and has experience with killing weeds (mainly in between the pavers of our patio) using a product that won't harm our cat's (and any stray animals') cute little paws?

And once you've got rid of them, is there something that prevents them from growing back?

I am not a keen gardener so the easier the better :)

You can buy plant based toilet cleaners that use safer ingredients than those found in regular toilet cleaners. You can buy them online from:

Thexton
Neco - The Eco Superstore
Natural Form

The EcoStore products are made without the use of toxic chemicals, perfumes and dyes. Their cleaners use natural oils like, citrus oil, pine oil, and sassafras to clean your toilet and leave it smelling fresh...

Celivia,.....boiling water!

Pour boiling water on the weeds, that fixes them. Depending on how wide the gap is;- if you have wide gaps you will need to put weed suppressant strips in between the paver's, (that is a black material type thing, which you will need to cut into strips).

Personally, I would just give the paver's regular doses of boiling water, when you see the first weed shoots!

Ginx is right - boiling water works a treat for small weed infestations (also brilliant for bull ants, just pour it down the main hole}. Of course, you can always pull them out by hand (the weeds, not the bull ants!), which I'm told is good for the soul. There are various products available that purport to be 'herbal' weedicides, but we've had little success with them.

Otherwise, I'm afraid you're stuck with judicious use of glyphosate (e.g. Roundup, Zero), which breaks down relatively quickly.

I'm interested that nobody in this thread has mentioned dry composting toilets, which are increasingly popular in the area where I live. I understand that they are available and feasible for urban use, so I wonder why we never hear about them.

Environmentally, they leave all other toilets for sh$t.

All above tips are spot-on, as I am using them for years....but the cola, well, has got aspartame in it and as it is no good for human consumption it should not finish up into water either. Better still, every body should stop the local (cola)factory using our aquifers for the sole purpose of transforming that clean clean water into that stuff!
And..no they cannot take chemicals out of recycled water.(fluoride and a host of others inc. pesticides) Whatever goes thru your "filtering human body", as in medicines,pharmaceuticals and the like, a great portion will be flushed unaltered thru her majesties toilet.Yoopie!!
Please ladies leave some marks for boys to aim at:-)

Ginx and CJ, I almost forgot to thank you for the tip. I’ve been pouring my leftover boiling water over the weeds since you gave that advice and it really works like magic!
Tomorrow I’ll be spending some time pulling the dead weeds out and then it’s only a matter of keeping it up.
(Can bull ants be trained as pull ants?)

I don’t know sh!t about those composting toilets, CJ. Don’t they smell? Do you have one? I might search for them out of interest. (Search with Google, not with my nose).

Eftfnc, yeah coke is terrible crap, that’s why I never drink it straight.