ACI Launches ‘Get the Dirt’

WASHINGTON—August 16, 2019—The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) has enhanced and expanded its “Exploration Clean” online experience to further help teach middle-school students the science and chemistry behind cleaning. New features include “Get the Dirt,” an interactive surfactant game; an updated Science of Soap ebook; and product ingredients reimagined as “characters of the cleaning court.”

This site relaunch is the next step in building educational modules for children to teach the science and engineering that goes into cleaning products. The new game provides an interactive and fun way to teach students about the chemistry of surfactants in detergents.

Surfactants (short for “surface active agents”) are the workhorse ingredients in detergents and cleaning products. In the new “Get the Dirt” game, a player must match the type of stain with the right surfactant for the job, capturing dirt, grease, and soils and lifting them away. There are five levels of this educational game that get increasingly faster and more difficult.

In addition, a new ebook is available that teaches the history and science of cleaning, as well as the benefits of cleaning products to health and quality of life. It introduces the “cleaning court,” which reimagines cleaning ingredients as characters in the Kingdom of Clean. This makes it easier and more fun to remember what these ingredients do and why many of them are critical to the cleaning process.

“The basics of soap, detergent, and cleaning product chemistry provides an excellent canvas for teaching an appreciation and love of science,” said Melissa Grande, ACI director of sustainability. “By providing these resources, we hope to inspire the next generation of scientists who may design the innovative, sustainable cleaning products of the future.”

ACI encourages parents, educators, and kids of all ages to check out its online STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) resources to better understand the science and chemistry behind everyday cleaning products.

The American Cleaning Institute is the Home of the U.S. Cleaning Products Industry and represents the $60 billion U.S. cleaning product supply chain. ACI members include the formulators of soaps, detergents, and general cleaning products used in household, commercial, industrial, and institutional settings; companies that supply ingredients and finished packaging for these products; and chemical distributors. For more information, visit https://www.cleaninginstitute.org/.