Earth Rated Products

I got the monthly newsletter from my local Co-Op yesterday. Earlier this year, I joined Ocean Beach People’s Co-Op. While many people want and strive to be green, the folks at People’s do it, they truly love it and live it. They have opened my eyes to a whole new level of green. I love their newsletter because I always learn something new. Admittedly, I don’t always follow or agree with their position, but I definitely learn.

Same goes for the following article. I really liked the content. Not sure I’ll do it all, but the world would truly be a better place if all of us did at least one thing they recommend. Here is the article in it’s entirety: 

Celebrate - the Eco Way

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Sometimes I get lazy. I’m bad. I tend to just believe the labels, the marketing, the hype. If you tell me my soap/shampoo/lotion/body wash/cosmetic product is natural, I think it is made of natural ingredients. I assume there are no “bad” chemicals, nothing that can be considered harmful much less cancerous. Unfortunately, too many times I’m wrong. Luckily for me I recently came across a really handy database that rates the safety of products.

The Environmental Working Group’s Cosmetic Safety Database covers it all: Makeup, Skin Care, Hair Care, Eye Care, Nail Care, Baby Care, Oral Care, and Fragrance. In addition to a rating between 0-10, the database helpfully tells you whether ingredients in the product are linked to: (more…)

Just exactly how short-sighted are we as consumers?? Gas prices have been below $4/gallon for less than a month and SUV sales are already rebounding! How can this even be true? Maybe Detroit is suffering from a case of wishful thinking and prematurely issuing phantom sales figures? More likely, I am suffering from a case of wishful thinking. I’d like to have more faith in my fellow Americans, but I don’t. I believe each of the those reports that say new car buyers are still in love with giant gas-guzzlers.

As of a couple of months ago, Costco’s Kirkland Signature brand came out with dish soap, laundry detergent and a couple of other environmentally friendly products.  In fact, the words “environmentally friendly” appear on the products almost as prominently as the brand name so they must be pretty proud of the themselves for coming out with this enhancement.

While I’m all for the greening of Costco products, especially because of the massive impact they can have on consumers, I’m a little skeptical about how green these products actually are. The Ingredients list on the label is way too vague to be helpful, or to prove one way or another how green they actually are.  Does anyone out there have any information to enlighten us on the ingredients? To what extent is this line actually greener?  

I don’t exactly expect the Kirkland products to be on par with BioKleen, Epic or Ecover, but I would like to know where they stand in relation to these super-green products. 

As I said, I’m all for making the products greener  but I’d still like to know what shade of green.