Mommy Goes Green

Seventh Generation has a column called ‘Ask the Science Man’ and I often find answers to questions that have been lingering in my mind.  One of the most recent Q&A columns was about VOC emissions from paint, new carpet and cleaning supplies.  As a reminder, VOC (volatile organic compounds) are toxins that are emitted into your home from many products.  A huge concern is that not only are they emitted the instance they come into your home but they can constantly emit VOCs over time – some products emit VOCs into your home for up to 3 years!

Browse the archives to find answers to other burning questions such as non-toxic nail polish, SLS (sodium lauryl sulfate) in products, plastic shower curtains and organic tampons.  If you don’t find the answer to the question on your mind, then Ask the Science Man yourself!

Seventh Generation has come out with another great line of eco-friendly and non-toxic cleaning products.  This time, they have joined forces with CleanWell, using their patented technology based on thymol, a component of thyme oil, to create a line of disinfectant wipes and sprays, including both a multi-surface cleaner and a bathroom cleaner.

Their disinfectant line kills over 99.99% of household germs commonly found in your home, such as Influenza A, H1N1, Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella enterica, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli.  Now you clean AND disinfectant safely, in one step.

Look for their new line wherever you normally purchase Seventh Generation products including mass retailers such as Target, Walgreens, Toys ‘R Us and natural food stores such as Whole Foods.

Print a coupon for $1 OFF any Seventh Generation product.

Know someone interested in a greener, more eco-friendly lifestyle?  Put a green kit on your Christmas shopping list, a collection of tools and tips to start out on their green journey. 

Kathy’s Climate Kits - kits include: compact fluorescent bulbs, weather stripping, tire pressure gauge, faucet aerator, reusable bags, LED nightlight, toilet leak detection tablets, letters to Congress, junk mail removal, and more. Plus, one tree is planted for every kit sold.  $45

Green Lemonaide- kits arrive in a reusable tote with SIGG water bottle, cleaning scrub, sink aerators, CFL and shower timer.  $35

The Green Starter Kit - kit includes It’s Easy Being Green book, Canvas Grocery Tote, Produce Bag, Stainless Steel Water Bottle by THERMOS, Stainless Steel Mug, Banana Paper Note Pad, CFL Bulb, Sun & Earth healthy cleaning products and coupon for 2 Trees Planted  $59

Seventh Generation Kits – You can’t go wrong with a kit from Seventh Generation.  Choose from their healthy home and cleaning kits or baby kits.  All filled with great Seventh Generation products.  $30 – 45

I’m in the last two weeks of my pregnancy and nesting like crazy, cleaning and organizing anything that can be.  One of the things on my ‘to do’ list was to scrub some of the carpet stains that have accumulated over the last couple months.

I recently bought a bottle of Seventh Generation Natural Carpet Stain and Spot Remover so I grabbed it and some white microfiber cloths.  I shouldn’t be surprised when a chemical free product works as good as anything with chemicals but still I am!

The directions say to spray the stain and let it set for 5-10 minutes before blotting up the stain.  I had to wait about 2-3 minutes and the stains were gone.  I was able to easily remove a stain on the carpet in my office that had been there for 2 years. 

I love it when a non-toxic, environmentally friendly product works just as well (or better!) than a conventional, chemical filled one.   Seventh Generational Natural Carpet Stain and Spot Remover uses hydrogen peroxide as its most active stain removal agent.  As with all Seventh Generation products, ALL of the ingredients are disclosed so you can decide whether or not you want them used in your house.

At $4.99 per bottle (get a $1 OFF coupon), it’s worth every penny.

Seventh Generation is hosting the Million Baby Crawl, an initiative to educate parents about stronger standards on toxic chemicals – ones that we are coming into contact with every day!  There are over 80,000 chemical compounds developed for products used in our homes but only 200 of them have been tested by the EPA.   Under the current law, the EPA does not have the authority to demand the information it needs to evaluate a chemical’s risk, and neither manufacturers nor the EPA are required to prove a chemical’s safety as a condition of use.

The Million Baby Crawl will help present the Kid Safe Chemical Act to Washington.  If the Act passes, it will require chemical manufacturers to conduct safety tests before using these chemicals in products.

To show your support , you can create a baby crawler representing your kids on their “march to Washington”.   You can also further educate yourself on chemical reform and the Kid Safe Chemical Act.   Attend an event, they are many in the large metro areas during November.  Finally, start to eliminate known toxic chemicals from the products in your house.  The easiest place to start is your cleaning supplies.  After that, look at the products your kids are using such as bubble bath and shampoo and then move onto the products you are putting on your body.  Going green doesn’t happen overnight, it’s gradual and eventually becomes habit.

 FREE STUFF: To get you started, Seventh Generation is generously giving away 1 of their Starter Kits to get your green cleaning started!  The Starter Kit includes: Glass Cleaner, All-Purpose Cleaner, Toilet Bowl Cleaner, Shower Cleaner, Tub & Tile Cleaner, Kitchen Cleaner, Natural Paper Towels, and Reusable Tote.

You can enter to win in any of the following ways:

• Visit the Million Baby Crawl website and tell us one thing that you learned
• Follow us on twitter @mommygoesgreenand retweet this contest

Leave your comment by Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 11:59PM PST.  Contest open to all U.S. residents, ages 18+.  We will choose 1 winner, by random, and contact them via email.  Privacy Policy.

Listen to Melissa Weiss, an ovarian cancer survivor and mama, tell her story.

September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month and the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund and Seventh Generation has started a website, Let’s Talk Period, to educate women about ovarian cancer.

Did you know that 22,000 women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer JUST THIS YEAR, it’s the 5th leading cause of cancer death in women in the U.S.  Risk factors include: peri or post-menopause, family or personal history of breast or ovarian cancer, uninterrupted ovulation ( no pregnancies, or no prior use of oral contraceptives ), and presence of BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 gene mutations.

In support of women and ovarian cancer, Seventh Generation is donating up to $22,000 to the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund – $1 for every person that registers on the site.  In addition, as a thank you for participating, Seventh Generation will give each registrant a coupon for their organic cotton tampons that are not bleached with chlorine, free of rayon and don’t contain added perfumes or dyes.

Why organic cotton tampons?  Listen to what Dr. Greene has to say.

I’ve been using organic cotton, chlorine free tampons for two years and have found them to be equally effective as anything else I’ve used and while slightly more expensive, over the course of a year – it’s not much, less than $20 a year!  It’s worth your health

Register right now!

For a long time, I’ve excluded bleach from our house and found other ways to clean where I used to use bleach.  I don’t like the chlorine bleach smell and chlorine isn’t good for the environment.  I haven’t missed my bleach except in the laundry department where keeping stains out of my toddler’s clothing can be a challenge.  A little marker here, grass stains there.  Mix it all up, leave it in the laundry bin for a week and voila – permanent stain. 

I recently was looking through Seventh Generation’s line of products and found a chlorine FREE bleach and decided to give it a whirl.  My first use was for an outdoor curtain that wasn’t taken down during the last 2 winters and accumulated some mildew over the damp months.  While it didn’t remove all the mildew ( and I didn’t expect it would since it’d been hanging there for 2 years ), it removed a lot of it and I was thrilled!

Through the ‘Ask the Science Man’ archives, I found that their line of bleach is intended for laundry stain removal only and is not tested as a disinfectant or sanitizer.  According to the Science Man, “Non-chlorine bleaches are typically comprised of low concentrations of hydrogen peroxide or percarbonate which are able to kill many common bacteria, fungi and viruses. Non-chlorine bleaches are capable of reducing the quantity of microorganisms on laundry, although the ability to kill microorganisms when diluted in a wash cycle decreases antimicrobial efficacy.[1-2] For the best results with chlorine free bleach, pre-treat any highly contaminated items. ”

Even though the site said the bleach was intended for laundry stain removal, the Science Man did recommend trying chlorine free bleach on tile for grout cleaning so my next task is to take it to the tile floor in my shower.  I might rue the day we chose an all tile floor in the shower – it’s all little tiles so there is LOTS of grout to get mildewy.  If that doesn’t work, he also recommended three different options: baking soda/water, vinegar/water or a steam cleaner.  I have all three, hopefully one of them will make the job easy!

So, to answer the question: To Bleach or Not?  The answer is yes – but with a non chlorine bleach!  I’m a Seventh Generation junkie but Ecover and Biokleen also make them.

Spring cleaning is a great time to start incorporating healthier products and habits into your home’s environment. Instead of overwhelming yourself with all these tasks at one time, try completing one task per week. Each Wednesday, for the next 8 weeks, we’ll review one Green Spring Cleaning tasks for the week.  By May, your home will be cleaner and you can relax, breathing in fresher, cleaner air!

WEEK 1 - Green your cleaning products. 

Replace run of the mill ( laden with chemicals ) cleaning products with non toxic, environmentally friendly cleaning products. Seventh Generation is one of the easiest brands to find, they are sold at Target, natural food stores, many grocery stores and online. Bon Ami is a great replacement for Comet/Ajax and costs the same. You can find Bon Ami at natural food stores or online.

DIY – Old fashioned, do-it-yourself, cleaners are “sweeping into homes“,  especially in this economy as they tend to be less expensive.  Even Martha Stewart recommends DIY from all purpose cleaners to floor cleaners to carpet cleaners.  For glass cleaning, a spray bottle of vinegar and water will do the trick or a bit of olive oil and and a damp rag will polish your furniture. 

In a recent article from the San Francisco Bee, Mrs. Meyer ( of Mrs. Meyer’s household products ), says that tartar, lemon, salt, olive oil, ketchup and even bread have their place in your cleaning arsenal – I’m going to find out how to use them as they are always stocked in my cabinets.  Ashley Chapman, an Ask.Com Organizational Expert, suggests using flour sack towels in place of paper towels – we all know that I’m a paper towel addict so I plan to try that out, too. 

We use a combination of purchased and homemade products and continue to use more homemade solutions as I have time to test them out.  You can expect more cleaning articles and newsletters as I discover more ways to use items in our pantries to clean our house.  Use whatever combination of purchased and homemade that works best for you! 

If you want to jump ahead to week 2, check out the entire MGG Guide to Green Spring Cleaning.  You can also print a copy to keep it on hand for each week’s task.