Blueland’s cleaning products are among the safer options on the market, backed by multiple third-party certifications that verify low toxicity for both humans and the environment. No cleaning product is entirely without active chemicals, but Blueland’s formulations consistently score well in independent safety evaluations, and the company has earned recognition from both the EPA and leading certification bodies.
What the Certifications Actually Mean
Blueland holds Cradle to Cradle Gold certification (version 3.1), which evaluates products across material health, recyclability, and responsible manufacturing. More telling is the specific Material Health score within that certification: Blueland achieved Platinum, the highest possible tier. That rating means every ingredient in the certified products has been screened against hazard databases and found to pose minimal risk to human health.
The company has also been an EPA Safer Choice partner since 2020. Products carrying the Safer Choice label have had every ingredient reviewed by EPA scientists for safety. By 2022, 46% of Blueland’s product line carried Safer Choice certification, a 25% jump from the previous year. The EPA recognized Blueland as a 2023 Safer Choice Partner of the Year.
On the Environmental Working Group’s cleaning product database, Blueland’s fragrance-free dishwasher detergent and laundry tablets both earned “EWG Verified” status, the group’s highest mark. Its powder dish soap received an A grade, and the bathroom cleaner refill earned a B. These grades reflect ingredient transparency and low hazard scores across categories like cancer risk, respiratory effects, and skin irritation.
A Closer Look at the Ingredients
Blueland’s formulas use relatively mild surfactants (the compounds that do the actual cleaning). One of the primary ones, sodium methyl cocoyl taurate, scores low across all major concern categories in EWG’s database: low for cancer risk, low for allergies and immune effects, and low for developmental toxicity. The European Chemicals Agency classifies it as unlikely to be mutagenic in humans. It can cause mild eye irritation in some people, and it does act as a penetration enhancer, meaning it can help other ingredients absorb into skin more easily. For a cleaning product you rinse off quickly, that’s a minor consideration.
Blueland uses sodium benzoate as a preservative, which is worth understanding. The FDA considers it generally recognized as safe (GRAS) at levels below 5 mg per kilogram of body weight per day. At normal exposure levels from a cleaning product, you’re well below that threshold. The more serious concerns around sodium benzoate, like oxidative stress, hormone disruption, and organ damage in animal studies, involve doses of 200 to 700 mg per kilogram of body weight administered daily to rats. That’s orders of magnitude beyond what you’d encounter wiping down a counter. One genuine caveat: sodium benzoate can react with vitamin C to form benzene, a carcinogen. This is primarily a concern in beverages, not surface cleaners, but it’s the reason sodium benzoate draws occasional criticism.
The Tablet Film and Water Safety
Blueland’s tablets dissolve in water using a thin film made of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), the same material used in most laundry pods. PVA itself is classified as harmless to aquatic life under EU chemical standards, with toxicity levels well below the threshold for concern. In sea urchin embryo tests, pure PVA showed a “total absence of toxicity.”
The environmental question is less about toxicity and more about biodegradation. PVA dissolves in water but doesn’t break down quickly in natural environments. In marine conditions without specialized bacteria, biodegradation was negligible over 28 days in one study. PVA blended with glycerol fared only slightly better, reaching about 5 to 8% breakdown in the same period. So while PVA won’t poison waterways, it does persist. Wastewater treatment plants can remove much of it, but the material’s long-term environmental fate remains an open question across the industry, not just for Blueland.
How Blueland Compares to Conventional Cleaners
Most mainstream cleaning sprays contain ingredients that score far worse in safety databases: synthetic fragrances linked to respiratory irritation, quaternary ammonium compounds that can trigger asthma, and solvents that carry moderate cancer concern flags. Blueland avoids all of these in its fragrance-free lines. The fragrance-free products consistently earn the brand’s highest safety ratings, so if minimizing chemical exposure is your priority, those are the ones to choose.
The bathroom cleaner’s B grade (rather than an A or Verified) suggests that formula contains slightly more active ingredients, which makes sense given that bathroom cleaners need to tackle soap scum and hard water deposits. A B on the EWG scale still indicates low overall hazard, but it’s not quite as clean a profile as the dish and laundry products.
What “Non-Toxic” Really Means Here
No regulatory body defines “non-toxic” for cleaning products, which is why the term gets used loosely across the industry. Blueland doesn’t just rely on the claim. The certifications it holds, particularly EPA Safer Choice and Cradle to Cradle Material Health Platinum, represent the most rigorous third-party validation available for household cleaners. Its ingredients are mild, well-studied, and used at concentrations that fall within established safety margins. For anyone trying to reduce chemical exposure at home, Blueland is a genuinely lower-risk option compared to conventional products, especially in its fragrance-free formulations.