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After Rodney resident Johnny Hamer got kicked out of college, he spent some time being homeless but eventually found he could earn good money by cleaning other people’s homes.
But there was a downside – the chemicals in the cleaning products he was using were making him ill.
“My skin turned to crap, and when I sprayed bleach in a shower I would end up coughing and spluttering everywhere,” he says.
The more Johnny thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed that people would use potentially dangerous products in places where they eat and are intimate.
“I don’t know why you would clean your home with a product that says in big bold writing ‘Do not consume. Call an emergency hotline if you do’. Why would you do that?”
“There’s a lot of research out there about home pollution and the impact of chemicals on your body, it’s all so negative,” he says.
Johnny switched to eco-friendly cleaning brands, but didn’t find them much better, so experimented with making his own.
He found that making an effective cleaning product is not rocket science. He says mothers are especially eager to keep toxins away from children and by looking through websites aimed at mums he discovered a host of readily-available, relatively cheap, natural and non-toxic products that could also clean effectively, such as baking soda and naturally produced ethanol.
“The sort of things your nana would know all about,” Johnny says.
Once he had identified key raw materials, he set about combining them and trying them out to find the most effective recipes.
So far, Conscious Cleaning makes surface spray, laundry powder, soap, laundry soap, floor cleaner and a toilet freshener.
All liquid products come in glass bottles and the idea is customers will be able to refill the bottles at a substantially reduced cost.
Already the company has a stockist and refill station at Eko Hub in Whangarei and is in negotiations with other retail stores. Last month, it had its first stall at the Puhoi market and plans to be there regularly.
Currently, all products are made in Johnny’s lounge on trestle tables, but soon he hopes to transfer manufacture to a large shed on his property.
His goal is to be able to give up doing the actual cleaning and focus on marketing and production of the cleaning products.
