Todd There are many great eco-friendly floor cleaners on the market. Cleaning floors is a never-ending job and it is important to have a floor cleaner that works well. Traditionally, acids and bases were the primary cleaning agents available on the market. A lot of development has occurred in the biodegradable surfactant and enzyme cleaning agents in the past twenty years. This has led to great improvements in eco-friendly floor cleaners.
The best eco-friendly floor cleaners need to be able to clean multiple hard surfaces well without damaging them. Most environmentally friendly floor cleaners combine multiple cleaning agents. Read our overview of what the different types of cleaning components are used for if you want to learn more about the different components of cleaners.
Many general eco-friendly floor cleaners can be used on hardwood floors, but I think that it is best to use a dedicated wood cleaner on hardwood floors. Most floor cleaners can be used on tile, but they are not the best product for cleaning grout. You can use them as your regular tile cleaner, but when it is time to clean grout, it is best to use a dedicated grout cleaner.
There are several tips about cleaning floors that are almost as important as what environmentally friendly floor cleaner you use. First, make sure that your mop head or disposable pad is clean. If it is not, some of the soil may redeposit on the floor. Next, make sure that you have swept or vacuumed any loose dirt or hair before you start cleaning. If you skip this step, the loose hair and dirt will get pushed around the floor and some of it is often left behind.
A final step that you should take before you start cleaning is to read the instructions on the cleaner. Some floor cleaners need to be diluted with water, others don’t. If the product needs to be diluted, make sure that you measure out the product. Using too much cleaning product can lead to streaking and using not enough can lead to subpar cleaning. Some cleaning products require that they are rinsed with water after they are applied, others don’t.
Best Eco-Friendly Floor Cleaners
There are many products that claim to eco-friendly floor cleaners on the market and they are not all equal. I look for eco-friendly cleaners that do not have unneeded ingredients like dyes and fragrances. If they do have fragrances, I want them to be essential oil-based. I evaluate the ingredients to make sure that the cleaner has the ingredients to do what it claims and also look at the Environmental Working Group’s rating of the product.
Eco Me Multi-Surface Floor Care Cleaner
Eco Me Multi-Surface Floor Care Cleaner is a great hard surface floor cleaner. Eco Me does a great job of listing the ingredients. The Environmental Working Group does not list this exact Eco Me product, they do list another Eco Me floor cleaner. I think that this cleaner would get an A or B rating if it was rated.
Eco Me Multi-Surface Floor Care Cleaner contains two main cleaning agents, decyl glucoside, a common plant-based surfactant, and acetic acid, vinegar. The combination of these two ingredients targets oils and grease along with mineral deposits. It also contains grapefruit seed oil which helps mask the vinegar smell and also will provide a nice shine to the floor. One negative of this product is that it is not a pH-neutral product.
Eco Me Multi-Surface Floor Care Cleaner comes in a concentrate, which I think is more environmentally friendly than a full-strength cleaner since the shipping volume and weight is lower. You can use the cleaner full strength to spot treat hard to clean areas. It gets great reviews on Amazon, with many of the negative reviews related to the vinegar smell.
Puracy Natural Surface Cleaner Concentrate
Puracy Natural Surface Cleaner Concentrate is a good option as a plant-based, eco-friendly floor cleaner. It is marketed as a surface cleaner and works just as well on a counter as on the floor. I think that Puracy does the best job of an eco-friendly cleaning company in disclosing its ingredients. It lists them all and each ingredient has its own page where Puracy lists why it is the product, what it does, and how it is made. Read our full company review on Puracy for more information on their environmental practices. The Environmental Working Group did not rate this product.
Puracy Natural Surface Cleaner Concentrate has two main cleaning agents, both clean by being surfactants, C10-C16 alcohol ethoxylate, and decyl glucoside. Puracy adds two ingredients to help lower the pH. The directions listed on the bottle are designed more for cleaning surfaces than floors, even though Puracy claims that this product works as a floor cleaner. Make sure that you dilute this product as directed and you can apply it with a mop instead of a microfiber cloth.
Puracy Natural Surface Cleaner gets great reviews on Amazon and I think it is a great cleaner. It is more concentrated than most cleaners, meaning that the shipping volume and weight have a smaller environmental impact.
Better Life Natural Floor Cleaner
Better Life Natural Floor Cleaner is a different style of floor cleaner than many of the ones in this review. It comes in a squirt bottle and you simply squirt it on the floor and then mop it. You do not mix it with water or rinse it. I find that this is great for small areas that need to be cleaned, but the product goes fast if you are cleaning an entire house. A slight negative with this delivery system is that it has more of an environmental impact in the shipping and packaging department since it is not a concentrate.
Better Life Natural Floor Cleaner does a great job listing the purpose and source of the ingredients. It does get a D rating from the Environmental Working Group. The D rating is primarily due to a preservative used and the multitude of fruit and plant extracts used for the scent. If you want a cleaning product that has less of a “chemical” smell, Better Life Natural Floor Cleaner did a job blending the scent.
The reviews for Better Life Natural Floor Cleaner are overall very good. There are some comments that this is not the strongest cleaner available, which I agree with looking at the ingredient list. I think this is a good cleaning product if you have a lot of carpet in your house and just have bathrooms and kitchen floors that need to be cleaned and do not want to go through the process of filling a bucket up with water.
Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multi-Surface Concentrate
Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multi-Surface Concentrate has been on the market for years. Mrs. Meyer’s products have huge distribution around the US and it is very easy to find in grocery stores and big-box stores. They do a great job of listing the ingredients and they have a tool on the website where you can look up more information about the ingredients. The Environmental Working Group gives them a D rating, mainly based on the preservative used and the essential oils.
Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Multi-Surface Concentrate uses two surfactants and they adjust the pH to be slightly acidic to help with the cleaning. This product gets great reviews for cleaning and can be used on non-porous hard surfaces, making it a great floor cleaner. I would not use it on hardwood floors. This product does contain fragrances, which make it smell nice but do add unneeded ingredients into the equation.
PUUR Home Natural Floor Cleaner
PUUR Home Natural Floor Cleaner seems great at the outset. It comes in the most concentrated formula of any liquid we reviewed, 1 ounce to be mixed with 31 ounces of water. This greatly reduces the environmental shipping and plastic impact of the product. The cleaning reviews for the product are great.
PUUR Home Natural Floor Cleaner falls flat when it comes to ingredient disclosure. They do not actually tell you what the ingredients are, on the bottle or their website. They list generalities like “plant-based nonionic surfactant.” I do not like this. If I am purchasing a plant-based, eco-friendly cleaner, I want to be able to evaluate the ingredients. PUUR wants you to take their word on the ingredients. I have seen enough dubious claims to want to evaluate claims myself.
I am not saying that PUUR Home Natural Floor Cleaner is a bad cleaning product, or that it is not environmentally friendly. I just prefer the ability to evaluate the claims myself. There are many many cleaning products that claim to be eco-friendly but do not list their ingredients. I prefer to buy ones that I can. Surprisingly, it is normally the products. That aim for the “high end” market that are more likely to not be forthcoming with their ingredients.
Best Eco-Friendly Floor Cleaners Conclusion
There are many eco-friendly floor cleaners on the market and some of them are great products. Even though multi-surface cleaners do not have the name “floor” in the title, many of them make great floor cleaners due to similar requirements of the cleaners. I have found that some of the best natural environmentally friendly floor cleaners are multi-surface cleaners. What do you think is the best eco-friendly floor cleaner?
