Every year 3 300 tons of all-round cleaning detergent is used in Finland, and when we are finished cleaning the chemicals are rinsed in the drain. The effective washing components in the detergents are the surfactants. Dirt often consist of some kind of fat, and we clean it with water. But water and fat can not really mix with each other. The point about the surfactants is that they lower the surface tension of the water so that they could detach the dirt. The surfactants - the molecules which look like heads with tails - drill their fat soluble tails in the greasy dirt and lifts out small lumps in the surrounding water. Then they keep the dirt floating in the water so that it cannot stick again.

Also in the traditional versions of soap and homemade soap there were surfactants. When we talk about surfactants we most often mean the ones that are industrially produced, and which outcompeted the soap based cleaning detergents of the 50s. The new surfactants were strong and efficient when it came to dissolving fats, but slowly there was a realization that they could be both unhealthy and also contribute to overfertilization of the waterways.

Surfactants are produced from natural fatty acids or oils (soap, soft soap) or from petroleum products (synthetic surfactants). Different sorts of surfactants could be harmful or unsustainable in different ways, considering raw material or farming and production process as well as chemical structure and what happens with the residues that are discharged into the drain. So called cationic surfactants are for instance very poisonous for water living organisms, they contribute to higher levels of nitrogen in the drains, and are only slightly degradable and are considered as very environmentally burdensome. All cleaning chemicals puts a strain on the environment, but environmentally labeled cleaning detergents are a better option. For instance, the surfactants in cleaning detergents labeled with the Swan needs to be easy degradable.