Target is one of those stores where you walk in for toothpaste and leave with a lamp, groceries, socks, laundry detergent, and things you didn’t know you needed.

It’s also one of the biggest examples of how confusing “healthy” shopping has become.

Walk down any cleaning aisle today, and everything looks green, natural, plant-based, or eco-friendly. The packaging is covered in leaves, soft colors, and words designed to make you feel safe. But flip the bottle around and read the ingredients, and a lot of these products are not meaningfully different from the conventional ones they’re trying to replace.

That’s the problem with greenwashing.

As an environmental scientist, I spend a lot of time looking past marketing and focusing on what’s actually inside products. Most consumers don’t read labels deeply enough to catch what’s in there, and companies know it. A product can still contain synthetic fragrance, hormone disruptors, respiratory irritants, and unnecessary chemical additives while being marketed as “green.”

Here are the products I actually buy at Target and why each one holds up when you look past the label.

Why Household Products Matter More Than Most People Realize

Most people think about food when they think about toxic exposure. Household products rarely get the same scrutiny.

But your daily chemical burden comes from far more than what you eat. Cleaning products, laundry detergent, dish soap, toilet paper, air fresheners, and synthetic fabrics all contribute to what your body encounters throughout the day. And the body experiences these exposures cumulatively.

A fragranced cleaner here. Synthetic detergent residue is there. Endocrine-disrupting preservatives in another product. It adds up.

Cleaning and household staples are one of the easiest places to start reducing that load, because they affect your environment every single day.

Branch Basics Cleaners: The One I Actually Trust

Most conventional cleaners rely on synthetic fragrance as their primary scent and marketing vehicle, and fragrance is one of the most problematic hidden chemical categories in household products.

Companies are legally permitted to list hundreds of undisclosed chemical compounds under the single word “fragrance” because those formulas are considered proprietary. Some of those compounds are associated with respiratory irritation, hormone disruption, migraines, and skin sensitization.

Mrs. Meyer’s is a perfect example of greenwashing in action. The bottle has flowers on it, the marketing language is warm and natural, and it contains synthetic fragrance alongside other questionable ingredients. People assume it’s been vetted. It hasn’t, not in the way most consumers think.

Branch Basics takes a fundamentally different approach. Their formulas avoid synthetic fragrance entirely and use minimal, biodegradable ingredients designed to clean effectively without loading your home with unnecessary chemicals. The ingredients are clean enough that I personally use diluted solutions to wash produce.

This matters beyond just skin contact. Indoor air quality is often significantly worse than outdoor air because modern homes trap chemicals from cleaners, candles, detergents, and fragrances in enclosed spaces. Switching to genuinely cleaner products directly affects what you breathe every day.

Blueland Dishwasher Tablets: Residue Stays on Your Dishes

Conventional dishwasher pods contain synthetic fragrances, dyes, preservatives, and other chemicals that leave residues on dishes after washing. Those residues don’t disappear because the dishes look clean; they stay on every plate, bowl, cup, and fork.

That matters for gut health. The gut microbiome is sensitive to chemical disruption, and modern life already stresses it through processed food, pesticides, alcohol, and environmental toxins. Adding chemical residues to the surfaces you eat from every day is an unnecessary additional input.

Blueland dishwasher tablets avoid many of the harsher ingredients found in conventional pods. They also eliminate the plastic film wrapping used in most pods; those dissolvable coatings still create microplastic contamination even though they seem to disappear. Less plastic, cleaner ingredients, and dishes that still come out clean. That’s the combination worth looking for.

Blueland Laundry Detergent: Your Clothes Are Against Your Skin All Day

Laundry detergent may be the most overlooked toxic exposure in the average home.

Your clothes stay in contact with your skin for 16+ hours a day. Bedding touches your face for hours every night. Towels absorb into damp skin repeatedly. For babies and young children, that fabric contact is nearly constant.

Most laundry detergents are heavy with synthetic fragrance, and that fragrance is specifically engineered to stay embedded in fabrics for as long as possible. The “fresh laundry” smell people associate with cleanliness isn’t cleanliness. It’s a chemical cocktail designed for prolonged, continuous release against your skin.

Many people never connect their skin irritation, headaches, or respiratory sensitivity to laundry products because the exposure feels completely normalized. When they switch to fragrance-free, cleaner detergents, the improvement is often noticeable within weeks.

Blueland laundry detergent is one of the cleaner options available at Target.

Worth noting: Molly’s Suds has a slightly cleaner ingredient profile in some formulas. Still, it often comes packaged in plastic packaging that contributes to microplastic exposure, which matters for a product used on clothing worn directly against the skin. Blueland’s tablet-based system meaningfully reduces plastic contact and avoids most of the problematic ingredients found in conventional detergents.

Reel Bamboo Toilet Paper: Regular Toilet Paper Isn’t Just Paper

Conventional toilet paper can contain bleach residues, formaldehyde, fragrance, dyes, and, in some cases, PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), depending on how it’s processed. Recycled toilet paper, which sounds environmentally responsible, raises a different concern: the recycled paper stream can carry BPA residues, inks, and PFAS contamination from the wide range of processed materials that pass through recycling systems. Some recycled toilet paper products have tested positive for PFAS compounds.

Microplastic contamination in recycled paper products is another growing concern that most consumers haven’t considered.

Bamboo toilet paper, like Reel, avoids most of these issues. Bamboo grows quickly, requires fewer agricultural inputs than conventional wood pulp, and can be processed more cleanly. Reel also avoids the additives, bleach, fragrance, and dyes common in conventional brands.

Is toilet paper the biggest toxic exposure in your home? Probably not. But it’s a daily-use product in direct contact with sensitive tissue, and a simple swap. That’s the pattern worth following: find the everyday products that are easy to replace, and replace them with something cleaner.

The Pattern Behind All of These Swaps

There’s a clear pattern in why each one makes the list: they reduce the highest-impact daily exposures without sacrificing how well they work. Clean dishes. Clean clothes. Clean home. No harsh chemical smell, no mystery fragrance compounds, no microplastic-shedding pod wrappers.

Greenwashing works because most consumers trust packaging. Once you know what to look for, you stop being influenced by leaves and soft colors and start reading what’s actually in the bottle.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is greenwashing, and how do I spot it in cleaning products? Greenwashing is when a product is marketed using natural or eco-friendly language and imagery, words like “plant-based,” “non-toxic,” or “green”, without the ingredient quality to match. The most reliable way to spot it is to ignore the front label entirely and read the ingredient list. Key red flags include the word “fragrance” (a catch-all that can represent hundreds of undisclosed chemicals), synthetic preservatives, and dyes. If a “natural” product lists fragrance without specifying the source, the marketing doesn’t reflect the contents.

Why is synthetic fragrance in cleaning products a concern? Under U.S. law, manufacturers can list any number of chemical compounds under the single-ingredient term “fragrance” without disclosing which compounds they are, since fragrance formulas are considered trade secrets. Some fragrance ingredients have been associated with respiratory irritation, hormone disruption, migraines, and skin sensitization. For a cleaning product used throughout the home, this creates consistent daily inhalation and skin exposure to an undisclosed chemical mixture.

Does dishwasher detergent really leave residue on dishes? Yes. Conventional dishwasher detergent formulas can leave chemical residues on dish surfaces after the wash cycle, particularly from synthetic fragrance compounds, dyes, and preservatives. These residues don’t fully rinse away with the wash water. For people focused on reducing gut microbiome disruption and overall chemical load, switching to a cleaner dishwasher detergent is a reasonable, practical step.

Why is bamboo toilet paper better than recycled toilet paper? Recycled toilet paper sounds eco-friendly, but the recycled paper stream often contains BPA residues, inks, and PFAS compounds from the wide range of processed materials included in recycling systems. Some recycled toilet paper products have tested positive for PFAS. Bamboo toilet paper avoids this contamination pathway, grows faster and with fewer agricultural inputs than conventional wood pulp, and can be processed without the bleach, fragrance, and dyes common in standard brands.

Is Branch Basics actually non-toxic, or is it just better marketing? Branch Basics avoids synthetic fragrance entirely, which immediately distinguishes it from most “natural” cleaning brands that still include it, and uses a minimal, biodegradable ingredient list. It’s not perfect, and no mainstream product is, but the ingredient quality is genuinely cleaner than most alternatives at a major retailer. The fact that the formula is clean enough to dilute for produce washing is a meaningful indicator of its position on the spectrum.

What’s the easiest first swap to make in a conventional household? Laundry detergent tends to have the highest impact-to-effort ratio for most households, because clothing and bedding stay in direct contact with skin continuously. Switching to a fragrance-free, cleaner detergent removes one of the most consistent daily exposures relatively quickly, and many people notice improvements in skin irritation and respiratory sensitivity within a few weeks. Cleaning products are a close second, particularly if synthetic fragrance is a regular presence in your home’s air.

References:

1. Rádis-Baptista, G. (2023). Do synthetic fragrances in personal care and household products impact indoor air quality and pose health risks? Journal of Xenobiotics, 13(1), 121–131.https://doi.org/10.3390/jox13010010
2. van Amerongen, C. C. A., Ofenloch, R. F., Cazzaniga, S., Elsner, P., Gonçalo, M., Naldi, L., Svensson, Å., Bruze, M., & Schuttelaar, M. L. A. (2021). Skin exposure to scented products used in daily life and fragrance contact allergy in the European general population – The EDEN Fragrance Study. Contact Dermatitis, 84(6), 385–394.https://doi.org/10.1111/cod.13807
3. Kulesza, K., Biedunkiewicz, A., Nowacka, K., Dynowska, M., Urbaniak, M., & Stępień, Ł. (2021). Dishwashers as an Extreme Environment of Potentially Pathogenic Yeast Species. Pathogens, 10(4), 446.https://doi.org/10.3390/pathogens10040446
4. Adje.K., Essumang, D.K., Twumasi, E., Nyame, E., & Muah, I. (2019). Levels and risk assessment of residual phthalates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and semi-volatile chlorinated organic compounds in toilet tissue papers. Toxicology Reports, 6, 1263–1272.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.toxrep.2019.11.013