Glass and Mirror Cleaner

Details

A fast-drying glass cleaner tested to IS 8540, the BIS specification for liquid glass cleaner. Spray onto the cloth for a mirror, onto the glass for a window, then wipe with a dry microfibre. The counter-intuitive fact about this category is that the surfactant level has to be low. A streak on glass is not dirt that was missed, it is the surfactant left behind when the water evaporated, so the correct dose is the smallest that will still lift grease, and a cleaner that lathers is a cleaner that streaks. Ours is 0.4 percent total surfactant, and it is printed because the number is the design. What actually clears the glass is the volatile fraction, 12 percent alcohol, flashing off in a few seconds before residue can form. Ammonia is the mainstream shortcut and it is worth naming what it costs. Ammonia flashes off fast and cuts grease cheaply, and it also stings across the room, attacks the oleophobic and anti-glare coatings on a phone or a laptop screen, clouds a spectacle lens with a plastic coating, lifts tinted film at the edges, and dulls the plastic of a car dashboard. That is why a mainstream glass cleaner has a warning about screens and this one does not.

• Surfactants total 0.4 percent, both named: sodium C12-14 alkyl polyglucoside 0.3 percent, lauryl glucoside 0.1 percent
• Volatile fraction 12 percent: plant-derived ethanol 9 percent and isopropyl alcohol 3 percent, which is what makes it flash off before it can streak
• Measured pH 7.2 at 27 C, neutral, so it does not attack a lens coating or an anti-reflective layer
• Preserved with phenoxyethanol at 0.4 percent, named because 12 percent alcohol is not enough to preserve a water-based product on its own and a bottle that claims no preservative here is either wrong or has one it is not naming
• No ammonia, no chlorine bleach, no phosphate, no perfume, no quats, and none of the blue dye every brand uses to signal from the shelf that a liquid is glass cleaner
• Fragrance-free, so there is nothing from the EU list of 26 declarable allergens to declare
• Safe on window glass, mirrors, spectacle lenses, phone and laptop screens, tinted film, shower panels and an induction hob top. Always spray the cloth and never the device
• Not for an anti-glare coating whose maker specifies water only. That instruction exists on some monitors and it overrides us
• Here is what it will not do. At 0.4 percent surfactant it will not clear the baked grease film off a kitchen window near a hob. Use the degreaser first, rinse, then finish with this
• No germ-kill claim. A claim to kill anything needs a named organism, a stated contact time and a test such as EN 13697 at an accredited laboratory, and glass is not where that question belongs anyway
• At about 2.5 ml a pane it is 200 applications from the trigger bottle at Rs 0.90 each, and 400 from the 1 litre refill, which fills the 500 ml bottle twice, at Rs 0.70