Archives for Great Green Sites category
Sometimes I feel like the White Queen in Alice in Wonderland, running just to keep up with developments in Green products. Bisphenol-A is discovered, then it’s banished, then we find out it didn’t really go completely away.
We learn which companies to trust – then find out that some of them have been lying on their labels or just leaving ingredients out of their label list. What’s a concerned consumer to do?
Take 1,4-dioxane, a known carcinogen and petrochemical. Now, wouldn’t you think that companies like Seventh Generation, Ecover, Method, Nature’s Gate and Aura Cacia – to name just a few – would do the right thing and list it on their products that contain it? And how can they get away with NOT listing it if it’s in their products?
Well, there’s a little loophole in the labeling laws – one that I wouldn’t expect ethical companies to take advantage of – but they do. 1,4-dioxane is considered a “contaminant”, not an ingredient. So, it doesn’t have to be listed as an ingredient. It’s produced as a by-product when a process called “ethoxylation” is used to cheaply make products milder when they contain harsh ingredients.
So, it’s in the product, but they don’t tell you it’s in the product, so you don’t KNOW that it’s in the product and that makes everything all right. Right? After all, consumers won’t mind when they find out that they’ve been putting this carcinogen in their dishpan, in their washer, on their kids, on their pets and on themselves. And, so what if a little bit of it gets into the environment and filters through to the water table and into the soil. It’s not on the label, therefore, it’s not really there and it can’t hurt anyone, right?
I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty burned up about this. If you can’t trust supposedly ethical, Greener than thou companies like Seventh Generation and Ecover, who can you trust? I’ve been paying more for their products over Clorox and other mega-companies who’ve just jumped on the Green bandwagon, because I wanted to support the companies who were Green before it was popular. Now, I’m rethinking that whole idea.
Do they really deserve my loyalty if they’re willing to lie by omission about a known carcinogen? I expect this kind of thing from mainstream manufacturers who have been doing it for years and getting away with it. It’s not a shock when I find that Dial, Lever, Johnson and Johnson, Ajax, Palmolive and Olay, for instance, also sell products with 1,4-dioxane in them and don’t list it on the label.
I need to hear from these companies that they’re not going to do this kind of thing again. I want to be assured that they’ll tell me everything – and I do mean everything – that’s in their products, no matter if it’s an ingredient, a contaminant or something that leeches out of the container into the product.
In the meantime, if you’d like to make sure that your personal care and cleaning products don’t contain 1,4-dioxane, The Organic Consumers Association, where I got most of this information, has a really nice Pocket Safety Guide to Personal Care and Cleaning Products that you can print out and take with you when you shop.They also have a lot of information on this and other subjects of interest to Green consumers.
Or, if you’d like to read about alternatives to products with carcinogens and hidden ingredients, you can stop by “Best of Mother Earth” where my friend, Karen recommends and sells several. I’d like to thank her for her post which alerted me to the 1,4-dioxane scandal in products from “natural” companies and for all the posts she writes about something she’s passionate about – the earth and all who live on it.
One of my favorite places on the Net is Natural News where Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, dispenses news, views and reviews of everything health-related. Unlike some of the Fish Oil Salesmen (the modern version of Snake Oil Salesmen), Mike doesn’t just paste up some tacky recycled content in an effort to get you to buy stuff. Yes, he sells a lot of the things he writes about, but there’s no pressure to buy and he’s obviously an advocate for a healthier, more planet-friendly lifestyle. I’ve never bought anything from him and I’ve been a subscriber for a long time.
Anyhow, one of his recent posts, “Helping People Isn’t Complicated: Four Simple Steps To A Better World”, really struck a chord with me. I’ve always believed that the world would be a very different and better place if everyone helped someone else as often as they could. I’ve seen this from both sides.
I grew up dirt poor, raised by a single mother who worked in factories to support my brothers and me. There were many times when we didn’t have enough food and I remember my mother throwing winter coats over us because we didn’t have heat in the dead of winter in New England. My mother was too proud to accept government help, so we struggled along, hungry, cold and discouraged. What a difference it would have made if someone at our church or in the community had brought us some groceries once in awhile or a couple of warm blankets. But she wouldn’t ask and they didn’t offer.
After I left home, I traveled around the US by thumb – a very stupid thing for an 18 year old woman to do. But it was the 70′s and “everyone was doing it” so I did. I worked at day labor jobs, donated blood as often as I could and picked vegetables and fruits, but there were times when there were no jobs and I panhandled for small change. Once in awhile, someone would tell me that they wouldn’t give me change, because they were afraid I’d spend it on drink (I’d never had a drink in my life at the time), so they gave me cups of coffee, doughnuts or sandwiches. One woman gave me a warm winter coat and a pair of mittens when I was in St. Louis in a sleet storm. A mother and daughter gave me a blanket. I think my favorite donation was a big thermos of hot homemade soup. I used the thermos for the rest of my trip.
The point of all this is that helping people means giving them what they need, not just throwing money at an organization that “helps people” and feeling like we’ve done our duty to the world. It means that we don’t have to have a big bank account to lend a helping hand to someone else.
It might mean that you use the money you were going to spend on a coffee and donut to buy a coffee and donut for that guy who begs for change on the corner near your office building. It could mean that you pay for groceries for an obviously struggling single mom or elderly person when they’re standing in line in front of you at the supermarket.
Helping can mean going through your closets, grabbing all those old but still good winter coats and walking around downtown asking homeless people if they want one. Or you could find a homeless shelter and ask if they’d take them and give them out. What about blankets? Sleeping bags you don’t use anymore? Are there people in your neighborhood or around town who are cold at night because they can’t afford to keep their heat up enough to warm their houses or apartments? I can tell you from personal experience that it’s really hard to sleep when you’re shivering.
There are so many things we can do. The Natural News article has a list at the end of organizations that help people directly and there are tons more on the Net. Sure, you can just give them some money if you have it to give and that’s a really good thing. But beyond that, it might be better to find someone in need and fill that need, personally, if you can.
Poverty is a real barrier to healing and protecting our planet. I don’t believe that we can be really eco-conscious without caring for our fellow human beings as well as we care for the Earth.
gray bat
I’m sitting here in orange sweat pants and an orange t-shirt. Talk about The Great Pumpkin! But this post is not about losing weight. It’s about Halloween goodies that you can get online – ones that are good throughout the year.
One of my favorite sites, E-Nature has a screeching barn owl ringtone that you can download to your cell phone. It’s doesn’t get scarier than that. But, if you’d like something a little less likely to cause panic in a crowded restaurant, you could opt for one of the other ringtones they have. Perhaps a Snowy Tree Cricket or Swainson’s Thrush? (May I suggest the Howler Monkey ringtone for your teenagers, so they can hear their cell phones over their loud music?)
Also on the E-Nature site is this topical article about (and you need your best Dracula voice to read this) Creatures of the Night. A good exploration of why it is that so many people are afraid of spiders, owls and bats, this is a good subject for discussion with your kids at Halloween or any time. And while we’re on the subject, can we just clear up one little myth?
All bats do NOT carry rabies. Actually, only 1/2 of 1 percent of bats have rabies. Of course, if you have an encounter with a bat, especially in an enclosed space, it’s only sensible to get checked out by a doctor and capture and bring the bat with you. But it’s just not true that every bat is rabid. It is true, however, that most bats eat millions of mosquitoes and that makes them friends to humans as far as I’m concerned.
Another great freebie on E-Nature is their Zip Guide. This handy section lets you find out all about the wildlife in your neck of the woods – or block of the city. For instance, you might want to know if there are any endangered species you should be aware of in the parks and fields near your house. You can find out here.
You can also find out about poisonous critters you might not want to step on, mammal tracks you can identify and general knowledge about all the plants and animals that abound in your geographic area. It’s one of those places where you can spend hours with your kids, and a place you’ll find yourself coming back to from season to season.
So, after the trick or treaters are in bed, surf over to E-Nature and nibble some candy corn while you download the screech owl ringtone. Then, tomorrow morning when your kids wonder why the candy bowl is emptier, you can distract them by calling your cell phone and letting the owl cut off the conversation. And after school, you can show them the E-Nature site and let them learn about the Creatures of the Night that are part of the ecosystem where you live.
Summer is almost here. Time for grillin’ and chillin’ and calling the lawncare company or going down to the big box store to get fertilizer, weed killer and bug killer for your lawn, right? Wrong. There’s more than one way to green a lawn without putting your family, your pets and the planet in peril.
The folks at Safelawns.org have just about all the information anyone could need to have a beautiful lawn using natural methods. Their FAQ section is a good place to begin and will probably answer most of the general questions you have on lawn care. But if you’d like to delve into the nitty gritty of creating or maintaining an organic lawn, then their how-to videos are a must.
Paul Tukey, the founder of Safelawns.org publishes “People, Places and Plants” magazine, has appeared on “Good Morning, America” and other shows, and is a much sought-after speaker on the topic of organic lawns. There’s also SafeLawns Live Radio if you’d rather listen than read and all the latest news on lawncare.
I was delighted to see that there was a news item about a very popular product for grub control, which contains imidacloprid, a chemical that may have a harmful effect on bees. I hope everyone reads it and thinks twice before using the stuff. What with colony collapse and shrinking habitat, the bees need all the help they can get. One way we can help them is by not using products that are toxic to them or to other beneficial insects.
Here are some other useful links to sites that can help you have a healthy, organic lawn:
Soft, green grass is wonderful to walk on and the best place for kids to lie on their back and watch the clouds. It’s up to us to make sure that the only things that they get from cloud-watching on the lawn are daydreams not a nightmare of toxic chemicals and pesticides.
I’ve just been looking at the second annual Climate Counts Report. You can get the short version here or the complete report here. It’s certainly an eye-opener. There’s also a pdf version that you can print out and take along with you when you shop, which I’ve done, because the older I get, the shorter my memory gets.
It’s encouraging to see that so many companies improved their scores, but why in the world are the food service industry big-names, like Darden (Olive Garden and Red Lobster) so far behind the green curve? They rake in billions and can’t clean up their act? Well, the local Red Lobster closed years ago, but there’s still a nearby Olive Garden where people stand in line every day to get a table. They can count me out until they’re a lot greener.
Also on the Climate Count list in the Internet/Software category, I was happy to see that Google is more than halfway to a perfect score, but what’s up with e-bay and Amazon.com, both with scores of 5 out of 100? That’s just not acceptable for those two giants. Shame on them and they can show some eco-action before I’ll be using them again. Of course, seeing as how I’m one of billions who use them, they’re probably not going to lose any sleep over my defection, but it’s the principle of the thing.
In the Household Products category, Proctor and Gamble got a 69 for their efforts to clean up the planet with their cleaning products and L’Oreal managed to snag a 58 as did Kimberly-Clark. That’s good news. In the Media category, I was surprised to see that General Electric got a 71. I’ll have to look into that further and see why they got such a high rating.
It’s important that we keep up on reports like these that measure the progress – or lack of progress – that companies make toward a sustainable and socially responsible future. I urge you to read the report and check out the Climate Counts blog where the latest climate news is always arriving on the ticker. And don’t forget the Pocket Shopping Guide on the homepage. Don’t leave home without it.
