Ecover Partners With WaterAid - Plus Free Water Care Pack!

Ecover, the eco cleaning products people (see our Eco Product Reviews page), are working in partnership with WaterAid to enable communities in Ethiopia to access clean water. They will be working with them for at least the next three years on a variety of water related projects.

They have an interesting website about a recent trip to Ethiopia, facts about how the company respects water and details of how you can get involved. They also have some neat water facts, including about what happens to water when it goes down the drain and also water use in their factories. A little promotional for Ecover but interesting nevertheless.

If you live in the UK (seemingly the place for free “go green” kits these days) you can get a free watercare pack while stocks last, including a Hippo water saver for your toilet, information booklet and some fun stickers and posters.

Ecover Floor Soap Eco Product Review

I’d never been one for floor soap before, but I recently rented a flat that hadn’t a single carpet in the place. So, being too lazy to make my own cleaner, I tried Ecover’s floor soap.

You only need to add a capful or two to a whole bucket full of water so a little goes a long way. Although it says it’s not suitable for laminate flooring, I gave it a go over everything – laminate, tiles, varnished wood etc and it seems fine.

Now Ecover products always say what they’re made from (see below for full list of ingredients), but non of the other products I’ve used have quite the lemon smell that this one does. In its raw form it’s overpowering and even when diluted and I’ve cleaned the whole floor of my flat it’s best to go out for a while. Not that it’s a bad smell, just a bit strong and it does say it’s got “fresh perfume from plant based ingredients”.

Leaving it dry, I returned later to find a nice clean home. It did take some harder mopping to get some marks out, but general grime and mud was no problem. Having not used another type of floor cleaner before it’s difficult to compare but I had no problems with it, the smell was reduced after I’d finished so it was quite a pleasant and “clean” smell.

It’s fully biodegradable and not tested on animals. The plastic bottle can be recycled (I’d be happier if it had already been recycled) and like other Ecover products it can be refilled where facilities exist.

The Ecover website gives a complete ingredients list:

The list below displays ingredients in descending order, with those present in highest quantities first.
Linseed oil
Perfume
Limonene
Nitromethylidynetrimethanol
2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol
Citral
Geraniol

It’s now stocked in most supermarkets or you can buy it easily online.