Would you change if it would make a difference?

Buyer Beware Team: Hayley Brigg, Jennifer David, Richard Baschak, Adam Campbell, Sara Harrison

What if you knew that the cleaners you used on your clothes, dishes, and countertops were the source of contamination in Lake Winnipeg, a place that has likely been your vacation spot as a child?

Products, like the dish soap under your sink, contain excessive amounts of phosphates and cause algae build up in Lake Winnipeg, the second largest lake in Canada. It isn't just dish soap that taints the wellbeing of our lake, hard surface cleaners and laundry detergents do too.

Environment Canada created a program called EcoLogoM, which labels certain products that meet certain eco-friendly standards. Lake Friendly, a labelling program in the Interlake region, bases it's criteria from the same standards. Lake Friendly's goal was to decrease the effects the harmful ingredients in household products have on Lake Winnipeg. Our goal as a Buyer Beware team was to provide awareness to consumers that these alternatives exist and test the differences between them and the commonly used cleaners.

We started by gathering information about the Lake Friendly products, choosing our eco-friendly brand of products and popular brand names to test the differences in effectiveness. Our group conducted our experiment at Hayley's house on Sept. 30. Each group member contributed some cleaning products or staining products and Jennifer brought a delicious lasagna for lunch!

After we had the lasagna, we left the remains of tomato sauce to dry on our plates while we went to work staining our white t-shirts. The stains included grass, car oil, wine, ketchup, and mustard. Prior to the experiment day, Hayley had spread tomato sauce around the stove.

The cleaning part of the experiment happened in two locations. Adam and I went to Bunty's Laundromat  to test out the laundry detergents and Hayley, Jennifer, and Richard stayed behind to test the dish soap and hard surface cleaners. Richard was in charge of video recording and photography during the experiments.

The dish soap results after the experiment ranked Nature Clean as first, Sunlight in second, followed by Dawn and then lastly, Palmolive.

The laundry detergent experiments finished with Tide in an astonishing lead, No Name brand in second, followed by Gain, and lastly, Nature Clean.

The hard surface experiments ranked Vim Oxy-Gel as first, Nature Clean in second, Mr. Clean in third, and Lysol in last place.

After the experiments, we conducted surveys and further primary research, like contact with a chemistry professor from the University of Winnipeg. The surveys told us that consumers are primarily concerned with effectiveness when purchasing a product. They claim they would be more eco-friendly if the option were comparable in price, effectiveness, and accessibility.

The Nature Clean dish soap and hard surface cleaner were comparable in price and effectiveness so they would be a favourable alternative for consumers. However, the Lake Friendly laundry detergent ranked in last place for effectiveness, making it an unfavourable eco option for washing clothes.

The purpose of our buyer beware was to inform the public of eco-friendly options to household cleaners. Having done the research, we can confidently reccommend Lake Friendly dish soap and hard surface cleaner that does not sacrifice effectiveness and is not subject to a major increase in price. These alternatives would help save Lake Winnipeg from the algae build up that threatens the wellbeing of the body of water. 

We would have to warn the consumer, however, that the Nature Clean laundry detergent was not up to the same standards of effectiveness and could not confidently reccommend this as an eco-friendly replacement.

To see more photos from our experiment, like the dishes, laundry, and stovetop, please click HERE.