There are many conventional household and laundry detergents on the market, but many contain problematic ingredients. Ecological cleaning products are a real alternative.

There is a huge difference between conventional cleaning products and ecological products, not because of the results but because of the chemical cocktails that cause harmful effects on humans and nature. Many conventional detergents are true chemical cocktails in which many aggressive substances are contained. These can damage our health and the environment and unfortunately children are particularly at risk. However, there is an alternative that more and more people consciously choose during shopping: ecological detergents with natural raw materials.

What are the benefits?

1. They don’t harm our health: A person who uses ecological cleaning products will not breathe harmful chemicals that can damage the lungs or cross the skin, but all other family members will also benefit from the ecological choice because they will no longer be exposed to harmful residues. The use of cleaning chemicals and disinfectants has been shown to increase the risk of asthma.
2.  Better for nature: The harmful chemicals end up in the drains of our sinks and many of them are not biodegradable and, over time, will be harmful to the flora and fauna. By converting to ecological detergents, we are helping to reduce pollution. Even the packaging of many of these products is recyclable and the waste load decreases considerably.
3. Let’s get away from the idea of “super antibacterial”: Disinfectant? At first glance it seems like a brilliant idea! Who wouldn’t want a house completely free of bacteria? However, it has been shown that the products they disinfect can be harmful. And why? Frequent use of disinfectant detergents often leads to the fact that bacteria develop resistance. Furthermore, these agents often contain ingredients that can affect our hormonal system or thyroid and cause health problems. Natural cleansers usually don’t contain antibacterial agents or contain them in small doses and for this reason they aren’t problematic.
4. Safety: Most bio detergents use more delicate, non-corrosive or flammable cleaning substances, therefore they are much more compatible and less harmful to our skin.

The use of ecological products could be the first step to safeguard the environment.

Marco Solito

http://www.ecco-verde.it

Thirty-two collectives, trade unions and civil society organizations supported the World Student Climate Watch, on May 24. It claimed to be committed to climate justice and calls for participation in protest action.

• 

This was the second time that Portuguese students joined the Student Climate Strike. The first was March 15. Young people, some accompanied by parents and grandparents, paraded through the streets of Lisbon, between  Marquês de Pombal and the Assembly of the Republic, wanting to do more.

A general strike was scheduled for September 27. We intend to mobilize many more, not only students, but also unions. It will be like that all over the world and we want it to be in Portugal as well. In the end of the demonstration that brought together about five thousand students.

As far as I can recall, my family has always taught me and my siblings about the importance of recycling. Back then I was young and still didn’t have a good grasp on reality and with that said, I used to frequently ignore the rules set in our house. I could have been told thousands of times to pay attention as to which, separately hanged, colored bag I’m putting my trash away and even then I just threw it out wherever I wanted to. These days I don’t really even need to think about it when my arm and hand muscles put the empty milk box into the proper bag as they memorized, but I admit I sometimes let myself slip, which later causes a little argument with my mom etc. And my brother…well, let’s just not talk about him. I’ve been rambling for long enough, how about we move on?

Lately I’ve been reading lots of different articles that mostly revolved about proper recycling and segregation of your waste. They all inspired me to try and improve our in-home system, so I talked about it with my mom and we ended up adding a few new containers for plastic (mine and my brother’s room already had small trash cans, but we decided to buy new ones and place them right beside them just for this purpose since most of our trash contains of plastic wrappers, bottles and bags), another box for papers in our gigantic wardrobe that stands in our hallway and a new little bag for all the pane and bottles after the expired/used make-up or skin care that we go through the year. 
Now I know that it may not seem like much, but trust me, this really did improve our recycling and my poor trash can no longer needs to be cleaned every two days. As an addition, we have also written down some new rules to follow that specifically apply to our lifestyle, so that we can make it even better. Here are the ones we chose:
Do not print out the e-mails that you have received if there is no need for you to remember their contents;
Try to buy products that are stored in a reusable packaging;
Try to restrict the usage of paper towels, use the fabric ones instead;
Try to take the reusable grocery bags when you go shopping.

With those simple rules and a little investment our trash bin sure looks cleaner! I really recommend trying those methods out yourself and/or finding your own ways to tackle your waste. Maybe you do it already and wouldn’t mind sharing? 
Let me know!

Gosia Drelichowska

As you may already know, plastic is a major problem on Earth. We – people, are doing nothing, to reduce amount of trash, used in everyday life. Almost 90% of plastic ever produced, is not recycled, but we can help that!

Decomposition of plastic, takes up to 1000 years, but we don’t have that much time left. On Pacific Ocean, we can see horrifying sight, a big island of trash, floating freely. Animals, like turtles, fishes, whales, are eating junk, which is causing their deaths.

We can reduce usage of plastic, just by buying products packed in paper, using reusable material bags for shopping instead of plastic ones. Also, in my opinion, great idea, normal plastic straws, replaced by metal one. Plastic straws are not being recycled, so they’re just floating in the ocean or laying in a garbage dump, you can use metal straws as long as you want, remember, you’re using one, instead of many.

And another great idea is filter bottle, where you only replace filter once per month. You can drink water from anywhere, and reduce amount of plastic bottles. And don’t worry, taste is the same!

We all can change the world, but we need to start with ourselves. Just by simple things, one by one, we’ll make world a better place.

Julia:)

There is a big problem with air pollution in Poland. And there are many ways we are trying to cope with that. One of which are city bikes, scooters and other public transport that doesn’t require gas or another type of air polluting fuel. 

This idea isn’t about helping the environment straight away but encouraging people to use the bikes instead of buses or taxis. For example, tourists in Wroclaw visited different parts of the city by bus or mostly by taxis, because it’s convenient and not time-consuming (most of the time), even when city bikes were already introduced to Poland, it wasn’t really popularized to use them. 

Because there were only specific places you could leave them and pay only online, sometimes you had to download an app. But when lime scooters were first introduced they became a tourist attraction! Exploring the city became so much faster, easier and more enjoyable. Because of their rising popularity, more variations were put in the city. There were suddenly automatics placed in the city, where you could pump up wheels in your bike. More types of city bikes were introduced. And they started to place them practically everywhere not only on tramp or bus stops. 

It’s not exactly a solution to air pollution in our country, but it’s definitely a good start to reducing it a little.

Etel Szczypkowska, Gosia Drelichowska, Julia Piotrowska

Welcome to our new blog!

Eco power aims to encourage through the articles that we will publish to take care of the environment, to safeguard it, proposing behaviours of daily life that could really make the difference to save the planet!

On the site we will load articles of various categories: from a section of our web where we will discuss products made with natural elements, and therefore without pollutants, passing through articles where we propose initiatives to save and reuse resources, to give a small but great contribution to save the environment, to get to the section of our blog where we will discuss the facts of the news, always on the environmental theme.