Greening My Mother: Gettin Clean

My mom's been doing lots of things to improve her eco footprint, but there's no shame in nagging her about more things she can do. Plus, most of the time it's not me nagging her; I just need an excuse to talk about more things I've learned and what better way to do it than point the finger at her. One of the focal points I've been researching and trying to improve upon is cleaning products. The two main ones I will discuss right now are shampoos and laundry detergents.

For the shampoos, I proudly plunked down the money to get Aveda's Pure-Formance Shampoo. It's one of seven Aveda products to earn the coveted Cradle2Cradle certification, and achieving that is, as Ron Burgundy would say, kind of a big deal. I previously tried some other "organic" and "all-natural" shampoos that lacked a lot of man-made chemicals and animal testing and all that stuff, but they just weren't working. Aveda has always been a rock-solid company in terms of trying to achieve a better balance of materials and impact and such, so it's cool to support them when they get a rating like this, plus it's a men's product, which is also a bonus considering 99% of stuff out there is clearly geared toward the ladies.

Moving on to laundry detergents, this one has always been a tenuous subject in the household. We do a decent job of air drying some of our clothes to reduce how much we use the dryer (because, shockingly, oxygen does a decent job drying things). But I've been pissed about how there should be a better way to clean your clothes without dumping Tide's chemical-heavy gel into a washer. And thankfully, the fine folks at Method figured it out. This stuff is made using 95% natural and renewable ingredients and the packaging is awesome. Since it's concentrated, the tube uses a third less plastic than traditional tubs of detergent, and 50% of the plastic used is recycled, so it's winning on all fronts (the fact that it takes up a ton less room in your closet is a big plus on its own). And best of all for us, they make a fragrance-free version because the wife has crazy allergies to traditional detergents.

At some point I'm going to start checking out soaps and other cleaning products. I'll let you know as I discover more.