Carpet is expensive and you want to keep it looking beautiful for as long as possible. Yet, the unfortunate truth is that you should never use shampoo or soap to clean your carpet.
By using shampoo on carpet, you're doing damage to the carpet's fiber. And shampoo leaves a residue that can cause irritation to you and your family members.
Why does shampoo damage carpet?
Shampoos use chemicals like Sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) that create a foam to lift and suspend dirt particles.
SLS is a surfactant that has an anionic nature, which means that it carries a negative charge when ionized. It's commonly added to shampoo due to it's high foaming action in water.
Yet, anionic variants are very difficult to remove from your carpet fibers. Unlike washing your hair, when you can run large amounts of water to rid your hair of these residues... carpet extractors do not under current operational procedures, get all the SLS residues out.
As a result, your carpet fibers are "glued" together once the water has evaporated.
Then, two things happen:
1) When you walk on these glued fibers, they mat down and do not come back up. This wears your carpets down and you get get paths in your carpet.
2) The SLS residues attract more dirt. How is that you say? Well, SLS residue is anionic or neg. charged and dirt is cationic or positive charge and what do opposite charges do? They attract each other! Dirt makes a bee line to the SLS residues in your carpet and this just adds to discoloration and the matting down of your carpets pile or twist.
Why is carpet shampoo hazardous to your family?
According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), SLS is a "moderate hazard" that has been linked to cancer, neurotoxicity, organ toxicity, and endocrine disruption. It can be irritating to the skin, nose and eyes.
How do we solve this?
When we encounter shampooed carpets, we have to run pure water in our extractor to get residues out of the carpet first.
We can then apply our plant-based enzyme solution to clean and encapsulate dirt in a natural polymer that will not interact with carpet fibers.
What about carpet stains?
One last thing...shampoos do not get all organic stains out...period.
Ask any pet owner. 98% of carpet stains are organic and our enzymes break down 100% of organic stains. Man-made stains require a different formulation of bio-degradable products to remove these stains...so far we have done around 38,000 Sq/ft of carpet cleaning and have not met a stain we cannot get out.
That's why we say..."We wont leave "till it's clean."
Green Carpet Cleaning Services
No matter the fiber that makes up your carpet, EcoZyme enzymes are the safest method to clean and restore your carpets.
If you are in need of carpet cleaning services in Springboro, OH and the surrounding areas contact us!