Product Reviewed: Clorox Green Works Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner

Place of Purchase: I bought mine at Dominick’s.  Sold at most retail supermarkets, including Wal-Mart, Target, Jewel-Osco, and a host of others — usually anywhere you can find other Clorox product, you can also find their new “Green Works” brand products as well.

Purchase Price: $1.99 on sale

Product replaced: Other non-green toilet cleaners, such as Clorox, and other brands.

Ingredients: Filtered water, coconut-based cleaning agent (nonionic surfactant; alkyl polyglucoside), citric acid, lactic acid, essential lemon oil, natural thickener (xanthan gum), blue and yellow colorant.  Contains no phosphorus.  Contains no bleach.

Use: Has that ubiquitous curved head for pouring around the inner upper rim of the toilet, pouring down the sides so that scrubbing results in a squeaky clean toilet bowl.

Results: The simple answer is that it worked very well and that it is a “green” product. Discussion follows:

I was very skeptical of (and still am not completely over that skepticism) the Clorox Green Works line of household detergents.  The brand itself, especially the name, “Clorox,” is synonymous with bleach, which is synonymous with pollution, as one of the worst household and industrial cleaners — it is extremely caustic.

As an anecdote, the cashier at Dominick’s didn’t call it, “Clorox,” but literally asked me to hand her the, “Bleach,” from my shopping basket.

So, is the, “Clorox Green Works,” line green? I don’t know about the line as a whole, as I have not bought and reviewed them all — but I will speak to the relative “greenness,” of this new toilet bowl cleaner here, with hopefully a full commentary/review of the brand once all of the products have been reviewed here on EHI.

Yes, we are willing to say that this product is, “green,” because its ingredients largely appear to be green, through careful search.  Also…

Best of all: It appears to have garnered endorsements from the U.S. EPA for “Safer Chemistry and from the Sierra Club.  It says that it is 99.99% natural, which is great for the product.  It is of course a recyclable bottle, which is nice, if only leading manufacturers would begin making recycling areas more tenable, or having a program by which one could bring a bottle to a store and have them refill it, similar to the manner in which large water containers are refilled at stores.  But that’s a commentary for another post.  The product is rather green.

Because Clorox is carried at so many retailers, it’s ubiquity gives it a distinct advantage over other green product manufacturers in that it already has relationships where it can place its products on shelves rather easily, meaning that most retailers can and will carry this line of products, and you don’t have to go to a Whole Foods or other such store to purchase this type of product.  So green cleaning products are being introduced to the masses and are therefore easier to purchase and use.

Why try it?  It’s green, it works, and it is both affordable and available at most retailers.

The drawback: The unneeded blue and yellow colorant.  We could do without them because it adds nothing useful to the product’s utilitarian purpose and is likely a polluting agent.

EHI There! What green products are you using that you love? What products are you trying to replace? Got an idea for a product you would like to be reviewed? We welcome guest columnists; just contact us!