GREEN CLEANING – and The “ Ionator”

I don’t usually jump on bandwagons or any kind of wagon for that matter but when it comes to green cleaning services or eco-friendly cleaning services, I have to confess that I am in love with the Ionator.  No, not some unusually buff super hero clad in iron that swoops in to clean my bathroom, although that would be nice.  I am talking about a spray bottle on steroids type of device that I have found works wonders on a variety of surfaces.

How does it work you might ask – well I will attempt to explain it to you with my basic 8^th grade chemistry understanding.

Before I explain, I just need to put a disclaimer in so that you do not discount my testimonial of the Ionator as a purely “green cleaning” or ”organic” means to an end.  I am not much of a tree hugger – not that there is anything wrong with that- but I do recycle, use my own bags at the grocery (when I don’t forget them at home because I have 3 kids in tow to the market), I never litter and try as much as possible to tread lightly on mother earth.  I do not however find it cost effective to do all my shopping at Jimbos’s, buy all organic foods, eat only raw food or play Grateful Dead music while I mix up a hemp shake. (Needless to say, I still have a box of all my old Dead ticket stubs!)  But I digress – the point here is that I believe in eating, cleaning and living as close to the earth as we can, but sometimes it is not feasible because “organic” and sometimes “green” things tend to cost more and may not always be readily available.  In some ways the whole “green” movement has become a bit of a fad since people have gotten so far away from earth friendly living to begin with that we now have to market green and organic as a way of branding some of the otherwise healthy practices that we should be following to begin with – in comes all the hate mail I know, but hear me out.  There are a plethora of chemicals you can spend a lot of money on that claim to be “organic” or ”green” and that might be the case, but I would bet that for a lot of the products out there,  a big part of the expense associated with the products may be wrapped up in the marketing and packaging, versus the quality or the “oganic-ness” of the product itself.  It may well be that you are better off sticking with Aunt Mable’s good old fashioned vinegar and water along with newspapers to clean your  glass – that’s what we did when I was a kid and doing things like adding lemon juice as another acid to water to help break up tough grime.  I am not sure what the right answer is.  I do know that I would rather have my 6 year old clean with regular old tap water that he can ingest and spray on his sisters without harm or substantial waste in monetary resources than to clean with something that I cannot even pronounce the ingredients of and has a list of warnings covering the length of the label.

Dismount from soapbox!
Well if you are still reading here is how I understand the IONATOR to work.  Simply put, the device puts an electrical charge into regular old tap water simply by squeezing the trigger.  The water is then ionized meaning the molecules are split up so that the resulting “oxygenated” mixture consists of positively and negatively electrically charged “nano-bubbles”.  The positive and negative molecules help attract and break apart the the dirt and grime, and lift it from the surface like a magnet.  It can be used to clean a variety of surfaces.  I have used it on Flat screen TV’s, stainless steel, mirrors, granite counters and more.  You can also use it on stains, dirt, dust and oils.

According to a study done on the ACTIVEION IONATOR at The Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) at the UniversityofMassachusetts,Lowell, they tested an ACTIVEION ionator against some of the leading chemical cleaners. The results – “Activeion cleans as well as, or in some cases, better than, the general-purpose and specialized chemical cleaners selected for testing.  The low level electric field applied to the water kills more than 99.9 % of harmful germs up to 45 seconds of spraying the water.”

Watch it in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QF2rVrD8Ya4&feature=player_embedded&noredirect=1

What’s best about this from a mother earth standpoint is this:

• Although water is an exhaustible resource, it is more cost effective than chemicals and way more earth friendly.
• The IONATOR does not need an MSDS sheet and does not carry any harmful chemical label.
• No fumes or odors for the faint of heart.
• Anyone can use, as long as they can pull the trigger-yes I can make my kids clean!
• According to tests, it kills harmful bacteria like VRE, Salmonella, MRSA, Pseudomonas, Staph, Listeria and E. coli.

Just another item on my cleaning wish list of things to have in my home or on the job when I am working with clients who do not want odors or residues or who otherwise choose not to leave a carbon footprint behind from their cleaning processes.

Now the hitch—it’s not free.  The scope of this blog will not attempt to do an ROI on the investment of purchasing an IONATOR but as for me and my commercial cleaning business, it’s worth it in more ways than one!  Wish I invented it!