Bio-D

Anyone who knows me will be aware that I am not a proponent of chemical cleaning products. I tend to use natural cleaning ingredients where possible, and if I do use a proprietary product then I like it to have as few ingredients as possible, and none at all that are going to do harm to the planet.

Bio-D household products have been something of a revelation. I trialled the range of products over a couple of months, using each item in place of my normal brands, and in some cases where I don’t currently use a brand. At an aesthetic level, I like the branding: simple containers with no fancy packaging in useful sizes. The packaging is recyclable and made with a proportion of recycled materials. For example, the laundry liquid comes in a cardboard box and the dishwasher cleaner is in powdered form, rather than tablet, so no extra wrappings. The company’s philosophy is to produce ‘products that don’t cost the earth’ in all senses of the phrase. The whole range is natural and biodegradable, ethically sound and with minimal environmental impact, so certainly something you can use with a clear conscience. According to their ‘blurb’ they are also a UK based, family-owned company.

A lot of companies are trying to climb aboard the ‘green’ bandwagon and simply re-branding or changing the advertising angle without any real attempt to clean up the more damaging chemical contents of their products (no pun intended). Bio-D seems to be different. Most of the cleaners have a handful of ingredients – spelt out in longhand rather than chemical numbers- and most of them are things you would recognise like water, vinegar, orange oil and vegetable glycerine.

All very sound, but the big question is do they work? In short, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’! I was sceptical; I invariably am, but having tried each product I am converted! The bathroom was my first target (I loathe cleaning the bathroom). The bathroom cleaner seemed like the obvious choice! The instructions are to spray, leave 30 seconds and then wipe with a damp cloth. No scrubbing involved. I didn’t think this was very likely given the state of my soapy sink, but I followed the instructions and 30 seconds later without any effort I had a clean and shiny, stain-free sink. Amazing! The toilet cleaner is a delight too –not adjectives I generally employ with toilet cleaners, in fact, any cleaners - if you follow the instructions. Squirt down the loo and leave overnight; in the morning scoosh around with a loo brush and hey presto, gleaming, stain-free toilet! I thought this might all be a bit too good to be true and decided to try the glass cleaner on the shower screen. Ok, so you have to use a little elbow power to remove the smears, but actually the shower screen was fairly grotty with soap spray at the time, and it too came up sparkling without too much effort. It also seems to need less frequent cleaning when I use this product as the soap stains don’t adhere as much.

Onto the kitchen: the multi surface cleaner works as well as the bathroom cleaner, and in fact I wonder about the need for both, as I think the multi-surface would do a good job anywhere. It certainly tackled the counter tops, the hob and the kitchen floor fairly effortlessly, and my kitchen is no model kitchen!

I don’t tend to use disinfectant because of the harm it does to aquatics, but the Bio-D disinfectant is a product you can use without worrying. It’s a good general purpose disinfectant utilising the powers of eucalyptus.

The dishwasher powder and rinse aid did a creditable job with the dishes, at least as well as my current brand, although there sometimes seems to be a bit of a residue left on the dishes. On the plus side any residue of food, etc. seems to come off rather than be baked on hard, which is curious, but welcome. The washing up liquid is concentrated and you only need a couple of drips for a whole bowl of dish cleaning power. No residue and no need to rinse. As a bonus the products have been allergy tested, so no red irritated hand either.

On the laundry front, the bleach, washing liquid and conditioner all perform as well as my current brands on a range of temperatures. I must admit I’m not a fan of washing powder and haven’t got around to trying it yet, but I probably will give it a go.

The polish leaves a nice shine on wood, without any nasty coating, and you barely need to use any at all. This seem to be the case with most of the products where a little goes a long way meaning much better value all round.

I have not been paid to write this review, although I did get to try the products out. I am not prone to praising cleaning products, but I genuinely feel that this is an effective and good value range, which you can trust to carry out the full array of cleaning across the household. As Bio-D state, “you have nothing to lose, the earth has everything to gain”.