lemon – the eco-friendly cleaner

There’s something about a lemon that just screams ‘freshness and purity’ – the opposite in fact of toxic chemicals such as chlorine or ammonia. Try Googling lemons and you’ll find numerous sites telling you how to use the humble citrus to do everything from flavouring your food to making your kitchen smell nice and cleaning almost any surface you can name.

So it was no surprise that 12 years ago when biochemist Burt Rodrigues, CEO of Biodx, started researching a way to produce a mild, eco-friendly disinfectant the humble lemon was top of mind.

“We found that by harnessing the power of citrus we could produce a disinfectant which kills 99.9% of all bacteria species tested, whilst remaining earth friendly. It was all about breaking the chain of dependency on powerful but harmful chemicals.”

Intrigued by the anti-microbial properties of the humble lemon, Rodrigues spent 12 years perfecting the product that would become Biodx. His research centered around the use of this natural citrus extract, which was then stabilised with an organic biodegradable compound, without using chlorine, ethanol or aldehydes – the toxic ingredients used in household products as well as in the wider industrial and agricultural worlds.

His goal – to produce a product that wouldn’t harm what nature had provided. “Nature is remarkable,” comments Rodrigues. “It holds the answers we need, and we mess with it at our peril. In our arrogance, we thought we could improve on nature, exploit it for our own ends, and it has cost us dearly in the remedial measures that need to be taken to clean up the damage we have done.”

You only have to read or watch daily news to see constant stories of communities suffering from polluted water or people dying of bacterial infections to know something is seriously wrong with the way things are being done. Biodx offers the solutions these communities need via biodegradable disinfectants and products that work with nature.

“Many companies talk about going green and sustainability but very few really back this up with actions. For us, working in tandem with nature is our driving force and our sincere hope is that other companies embrace the ‘natural’ way of producing products such as ours.

“The ridiculous truth is that working with nature benefits everybody, financially as well as morally. We need all other forward-looking, courageous companies to lead the way to a new kind of thinking.”