TL;DR. Green Seal certified means a cleaning product or service has passed independent, science-based testing covering safety, environmental impact, and actual cleaning performance. It’s run by a nonprofit, not a government agency, and not something a company can simply buy or self-declare. The certification covers both products (most commonly under GS-37 for professional-use cleaners) and cleaning services (GS-42, which audits the full operation, not just the bottle). Annual recertification keeps the label current. A leaf icon, the word “green,” or a vague “eco-friendly” claim on a website means nothing without it.

 

What Green Seal actually is (and isn’t)

Green Seal is an independent nonprofit that has been certifying cleaning products and services since 1989. It sets its own science-based standards, runs its own testing, and its certification is not affiliated with any government program. A company can’t apply for the label, write a check, and put it on the bottle. The product or service has to earn it.

That last part matters because the cleaning aisle is full of cues designed to feel trustworthy without actually being verified by anyone. A green leaf on the label. The word “natural” in the product name. Packaging that lists botanical-sounding ingredients in a font that suggests a farmers market. None of those are regulated terms. Anyone can print them. Green Seal’s certification is one of the few labels backed by independent third-party testing, which means someone outside the company looked at the product, ran it through a set of documented criteria, and confirmed it passed.

The certification doesn’t stop there, either. To keep the seal, a product or service goes through annual recertification audits. It’s not a one-time review that a manufacturer can pass once and then let slide. That ongoing requirement is what makes the label worth paying attention to, rather than just a sign that the product met a standard five years ago.

If you want to understand the specific labels you’re likely to see, this breakdown of eco-friendly vs. non-toxic vs. natural cleaning claims walks through what each term does and doesn’t mean. Green Seal sits in a different category from all of them. It’s verified, not just described. (greenseal.org)

The standards that matter for homeowners: GS-37, GS-42, and GS-8

Green Seal uses numbered standards to distinguish between what’s being certified. Understanding the difference between a product standard and a service standard is the part most homeowners skip, and it’s the part that matters most when you’re hiring a cleaner.

A product standard certifies the bottle on the shelf. A service standard certifies the company doing the cleaning and the operational program behind it. Those are two very different things.

GS-37 is the product standard that applies to industrial and institutional cleaners, meaning the kind of concentrated, professional-grade products that a commercial or residential cleaning company would buy and use on the job, not the retail spray under your sink. If a professional cleaning company says it uses Green Seal certified products, GS-37 is most likely what’s on the label. GS-8 and GS-52 cover household and specialty product equivalents, which are what you’d see on the shelf at a natural grocery store. (GS-37 standard)

GS-42 is the service standard, and it’s a meaningfully harder thing to earn. It doesn’t ask whether the products a cleaning company buys are certified. It audits the company’s training program, equipment, processes, waste handling, and ongoing compliance. The operation itself gets evaluated, not just the products it happens to stock. (GS-42 standard)

The practical distinction: “We use Green Seal certified products” and “We are a Green Seal certified cleaning service” are two different claims. The first one tells you what’s in the spray bottle. The second one tells you how the whole job is done. Only one of them means the cleaning operation itself was independently verified end to end.

What a product has to prove to earn the seal

The criteria Green Seal uses cover three areas: human health, environmental impact, and performance. All three have to clear the bar, not just the environmental ones.

On the human-health side, a certified product has to demonstrate low VOCs, a PFAS-free formulation, no carcinogens, no mutagens, no reproductive toxins, and no respiratory sensitizers. Fragrance restrictions apply where relevant. The point is that what gets left behind on your counters and floors after the cleaning crew leaves has been screened for the ingredients most likely to affect the people living in the house.

On the environmental side, certified products have to use biodegradable ingredients, avoid compounds that contribute to smog or ozone depletion, and meet aquatic toxicity limits so what goes down the drain doesn’t disrupt wastewater treatment. Concentrated formulations count here too. A product sold in concentrate form requires less plastic packaging and generates fewer shipping emissions per use, so that factor gets weighted in.

The performance requirement is the one that surprises most people. Green Seal will not certify a product that doesn’t clean as well as conventional alternatives. That’s a deliberate standard, not a nice-to-have. If a green product fails to perform, the user switches back to something harsher to get the job done, which defeats the point entirely. So the certification includes actual cleaning performance testing, not just an ingredient screen. (Green Seal on measuring performance)

Green Seal isn’t the only legitimate certification in the cleaning space. Two others come up regularly: EPA Safer Choice and UL ECOLOGO. All three are credible independent certifications, and they’re not competing with each other so much as answering different questions.

EPA Safer Choice is a federal program, run by the Environmental Protection Agency, that screens every ingredient in a product against the EPA’s safer-chemicals criteria. The focus is narrow and deep: ingredient by ingredient, is each one safe? A product can earn Safer Choice while using ingredients that Green Seal wouldn’t accept for other reasons, and vice versa. The two labels look at the same general problem from different angles.

UL ECOLOGO is broader in scope. It covers many product categories beyond cleaning, and it evaluates environmental impact across a product’s full lifecycle, from manufacturing through disposal. It’s a credible signal for environmental sustainability, though it doesn’t include the same cleaning-performance testing that Green Seal does.

The useful frame isn’t “which one is best.” It’s “which question does each one answer.” Green Seal answers: did this product or cleaning service pass a combined safety, environmental, and performance review? Safer Choice answers: did the EPA screen every ingredient in this formula? ECOLOGO answers: what’s the broader environmental footprint of this product across its lifecycle?

A product can carry more than one certification, and overlap is a stronger trust signal than any single label on its own.

Why this matters for households with kids, pets, or allergy sufferers

Toddlers crawl on floors. Pets lick surfaces. Kids with asthma breathe the air in a room after it’s been cleaned. When a cleaning product leaves a residue or disperses fumes that linger, the people in the house keep absorbing that exposure for hours after the crew is gone. VOC limits, fragrance restrictions, and the absence of respiratory sensitizers in a certified product are all screened specifically because those are the pathways that matter in a home with kids or pets or someone who reacts to fragrances.

Conventional products often use fragrance to mask the smell of their own ingredients. When you walk into a room right after it’s been cleaned and get hit with a heavy lemon or lavender scent, that’s not just a marketing choice, it’s usually covering the lingering smell of something underneath. The absence of that scent after a cleaning with certified low-VOC products is a meaningful signal. It’s not a coincidence and it’s not neutral. It means what’s left behind on your floors and counters isn’t putting anything harmful into the air after the crew is gone.

When a certified cleaning service shows up at a home, the products in the kit should be identifiable by name, not described in vague terms. A cleaner using certified products should be able to tell you what they’re using. The bottles should be labeled. If you ask for a safety data sheet on a specific product, that information should be available. There’s no bleach or ammonia in a compliant kit, and the cleaner shouldn’t need to add any to get the job done.

How to verify a Green Seal claim before you hire a cleaner

A company calling itself green, eco-friendly, or sustainable on its website costs nothing. Verifying whether that claim is backed by anything is a three-minute exercise.

Start at greenseal.org. The certified directory is public, searchable, and lists every currently certified product and service by name. If a cleaning company claims to be Green Seal certified, look it up. Legitimate certification is in the directory. If it’s not there, the claim is unverified.

Ask which standard they hold. GS-42 means the service itself was audited. GS-37 on the products they use means the bottles cleared a product standard, but the company’s operation wasn’t independently reviewed. Both matter, but they’re not equivalent. A company that knows the answer to this question has done the work. A company that can’t answer it probably hasn’t.

Ask which products they’ll use in your home. Not “we use certified products” as a general statement. Specific product names. A company operating with a compliant cleaning kit can tell you what’s in it. If the answer is vague, that’s worth noticing. (Green Seal certified products directory)

Watch for evasion patterns. A leaf in the logo. The word “green” in the company name. “We use eco-friendly products” with no certification reference. Refusal or inability to name the specific products they bring into a home. None of those are verification, and all of them are common. There’s a longer breakdown of what those patterns actually signal in this guide to decoding cleaning product labels.

Where Avanti Green fits

vanti Green holds Green Seal GS-42 service certification, earned in 2025, which means the full cleaning operation, not just the products in the kit, was audited and verified. The kit itself uses Green Seal certified products: Dr. Bronner’s Sal Suds for floors and general surfaces, Bon Ami powder cleanser for tubs and tile, Envirox H2Orange2 as a multi-surface low-VOC hydrogen peroxide cleaner, and color-coded microfiber to prevent cross-room contamination.

Those are the same answers any homeowner should expect when they ask a green cleaner what’s in the kit. If you’re hiring someone to clean your home, this is the standard to hold them to.

Book a home cleaning or request a commercial cleaning estimate. Avanti Green cleans Las Vegas and Henderson homes and commercial spaces using the same certified kit, same verified process.

Claudia Meneses
Owner/CEO at 

Claudia Meneses is the Founder and CEO of Avanti Green Eco Cleaning, the first eco-friendly cleaning company in Las Vegas, which she launched in 2011. Over more than a decade she has grown it into a full-service, Green Seal-certified operation serving residential and commercial clients across Las Vegas and Henderson, including the VIP lounge at Harry Reid International Airport. A Stanford Latino Business Action Network graduate, she built the business around non-toxic products that are safe for clients with allergies and asthma, their families, and their pets. Her expertise spans the full range of cleaning work, from eco-friendly home cleaning to carpet care, pressure washing, and floor restoration.