Todd It is wonderful that eco-friendly products are made for just about every cleaning purpose including toilet bowls. There are some things to think about when you look for the best eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaner. I grew up with the thought that a clean toilet bowl was a blue toilet bowl. I know now that the toilet bowl does not need to be blue in order to be clean.
Conventional Toilet Bowl Cleaners
Most conventional toilet bowl cleaners contain harmful chemicals including bleach, chlorine, or ammonia. They do a good job cleaning toilet bowls, including killing harmful bacteria. They also can kill helpful bacteria that help degrade waste which goes through the sewer system. Many of the chemicals they contain are ones that you do not want on your hands.
Manufactured frequently use dyes, most commonly blue, in their products and for many people a blue toilet bowl denotes a clean toilet bowl. The only purpose that these dyes have are for marketing and they are an extra ingredient that is not needed to get a toilet clean.
Manufacturers also rely heavily on fragrances and perfumes in conventional toilet bowl cleaners. If I close my eyes, I can smell a clean toilet. It is nice to have a good smelling toilet bowl after it is cleaned, but these are not needed in order to have a clean toilet bowl.
Eco-Friendly Toilet Bowl Cleaners
A wide range of products have been developed using plant-based cleaners in order to achieve the same results as conventional toilet bowl cleaners. Some of these products advertise themselves as eco-friendly cleaners and others advertise themselves as all-natural cleaners. It does not matter how they advertise themselves as long as they have plant-based ingredients and do a good job cleaning toilets.
There are many types of ingredients used in eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners. The most common are plant-based ingredients that fall into several categories including acids, enzymes, and essential oils. Using a combination of these ingredients can make a cleaner that is anti-microbial and helps get rid of mineral build-ups.
Most eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners are not as strong as conventional cleaners with harmful chemicals. I wish this was not the case, but it is. This does not mean that they cannot do an amazing job cleaning toilet bowls or that you need to use a cleaner with harmful chemicals. I have discovered that eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners work best if you clean your toilet bowl on a regular basis. This does not mean that you need to clean your toilet bowl every day. If you only clean your toilet bowl every three months, you will need to use more elbow grease with most eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners compared to conventional toilet bowl cleaners.
I strongly recommend cleaning your toilet bowl more often than every three months for many other reasons!!! I also don’t think that anyone reading this blog post is the person that is only cleaning their toilet bowl every three months.
Best Eco-Friendly Toilet Bowl Cleaners
One thing that I like about eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners is that most of them do a very good job cleaning toilet bowls. Some of them can be used as general cleaners and others are best left to the toilet bowl. I used the Environmental Working Group’s ratings along with what the ingredients are to help determine the best eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners.
Better Life Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Better Life Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner does a great job cleaning toilets and a great job disclosing the ingredients in the product. I really like how they list all of the ingredients and not just “natural fragrances,” like some other products. Unfortunately, the Environmental Working Group did not include them in their reviews.
Better Life Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner comes in a recyclable plastic bottle. They do not list if the bottle is made from recycled or plant-based products.
Better Life Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner does work best if you let it sit on the toilet bowl for 5-10 minutes before you start the cleaning process. It was not the most expensive product in our test but it was not the cheapest either. It had one of the most extensive ingredient lists and I think that the plethora of plant-derived cleaning agents do help it doa great job getting a clean toilet.
Eco Me Natural Powerful Deep Cleaning Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Eco Me Natural Powerful Deep Cleaning Toilet Bowl Cleaner is a plant-based toilet bowl cleaner. It uses a combination of plant-based coco glucoside, sodium bicarbonate, plant essential oils, and citric acid to clean. The combination of ingredients makes this cleaner a good shower cleaner too. The Environmental Working Group gives it a B rating.
The ingredient list does not list any petrochemical or synthetic ingredients. The specific essential oils that are used are not listed. A benefit of using essential oils is that the product smells good and benefits from their anti-microbial properties.
Eco Me Natural Powerful Deep Cleaning Toilet Bowl Cleaner comes in a plastic bottle that is recyclable. They do not mention where the plastic from the bottle comes from. Another downside is that this product is more expensive than many of the other cleaners in this review.
Seventh Generation Emerald Cypress and Fir Scent Toilet Bowl Cleaner
You cannot review natural and eco-friendly cleaning products and not take a look at the Seventh Generation product. Seventh Generation Emerald Cypress and Fir Scent Toilet Bowl Cleaner is certified to be 97% biobased by the USDA. They use a combination of essential oils, plant-derived lactic acid, and plant-derived caprylyl/myristyl glucoside as cleaning agents. They received an A rating from the Environmental Working Group.
Seventh Generation Toilet Bowl Cleaner comes in a recyclable plastic bottle, but they do not mention where the plastic comes from. The bottle has the same crooked neck shape as many traditional toilet bowl cleaner, but one negative with the bottle is that it is prone to breaking where you squeeze it. It is incredibly frustrating to half a quarter of a bottle of cleaning agent spill needlessly.
Seventh Generation Toilet Bowl Cleaner is dye-free and they claim it is fragrance-free, but they do add essential oils. Essential oils are a fragrance in my opinion. It does have less of a smell than some other agents in this review. It is also one of the cheaper and easier to find eco-friendly natural toilet bowl cleaners around.
Ecover Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Ecover Toilet Bowl Cleaner is a plant and mineral-based cleaner with three main ingredients for cleaning. Plant-based citric acid is used to remove limescale, plant-based sodium citrate is used to regulate pH, and plant-based lauryl glucoside is used as a surfactant. Overall Ecover Toilet Bowl Cleaner gets a B rating from the Environmental Working Group.
It does have a pine-scented fragrance which they claim comes from essential oils and is vegetable + petrochemical-based. They do not list all of the fragrance ingredients, which is disappointing. The product also does include glyoxal which is a processing aid and is petrochemical-based.
Ecover Toilet Bowl Cleaner gets high marks for its packaging. It is made from 100% plant-based plastic and is 100% recyclable.
Green Works Toilet Bowl Gel Cleaner
Green Works Toilet Bowl Cleaner is Clorox’s brand of eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaner. They claim that the product is comprised of 97% “naturally derived ingredients”. The cleaning ingredients are plant-based alkyl polyglucoside, naturally derived citric acid, and lactic acid. I was surprised when the Environmental Working Group gave it an F rating.
The F rating that the Environmental Working Group gave Green Works Toilet Bowl Cleaner is mainly due to the fragrances and dye that they use in the product. In my opinion, there is no reason a natural toilet bowl cleaner should be using a synthetic dye. Who cares what color the product is? The plastic bottle is the shape of conventional toilet bowl cleaners but does not have the cracking problem like the Seventh Generation bottle. They do not mention the source of the plastic in the bottle, but the bottle is recyclable.
One positive with Green Works Toilet Bowl Cleaner is that it does do a good job cleaning. If the product’s bottle was made from recycled plastic and they did not use synthetic dyes this would be my go-to toilet bowl cleaner.
Eco-Friendly Toilet Bowl Cleaning Conclusion
It was nice reviewing the best eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners because there were actually products that cleaned well and were eco-friendly. They are also more affordable than many eco-friendly cleaning products.
Make sure to check out our other guides and reviews on eco-friendly products.
