"Eco-friendly" is one of the loosest words in this industry. Plenty of companies offer it as a paid upgrade, which should tell you something: if the green option costs extra, the default option is the one they actually plan to use in your home.
At the product level, the real change is toxicity and residue. Plant-based, low-toxicity cleaners do the same work on the vast majority of household surfaces without leaving a chemical film behind, and without the sharp smell that people mistake for cleanliness. That smell is not clean. It is volatile organic compounds hanging in a closed room, and it matters most in exactly the houses that can least afford it: homes with infants, with asthma, with allergies, or with pets who lick the floor.
At the method level, the change is bigger than the bottle. Microfiber traps and removes dust rather than redistributing it, which is the difference between a surface that looks clean and a room whose air is actually cleaner. HEPA vacuum filtration does the same job for floors. Correct dilution means less product doing more work, and far less packaging going into a landfill over a year of weekly visits.
There are honest limits. Some jobs genuinely need something stronger: heavy mold in a neglected shower, certain post-construction residues, or a sanitizing requirement in a commercial kitchen. The right answer is not to pretend otherwise, it is to tell you before using it and to keep it contained to the surface that needs it.
So the question to ask a cleaning company is not "do you offer green cleaning?" It is: is it the default or an upsell, what do you use, and what would make you reach for something else? A company that can answer all three specifically is doing it. A company that answers with a logo is selling it.