Natural Home Products

Reducing our waste is one step in reducing our footprint on Mother Earth.  Initiatives to reduce, reuse, and recycle have made great strides towards a more sustainable and positive future.  And with many communities providing recycling programs, it is easier to participate in effective recycling projects.  But our efforts to curb our waste need to be broader than just insuring that the glass, plastic, cardboard, newsprint and paper are sorted and picked up by the recycling truck.   There are many more ways to contribute to broad, positive, and sustaining efforts to reduce, reuse, and recycle.

Making sustainable initiatives easy to follow is the key to participation. Here are a few tips that can help you to reduce, reuse and recycle:

1. If you don’t need it, don’t buy it! No, really!
2. Avoid disposable items where alternatives exist. In many cities, you can also take advantage of many container re-fill programs.
3. Re-use products (ie glass jars) and repair home products, whenever possible, instead of buying new. Also, when buying new products assess your options for buying without excess packaging.
4. Reduce waste by compositing and recycling. Having recycling recepticles nearby will make recycling easy. An old ice cream bucket in the freezer can hold kitchen scraps (without the smell) until they make it out to the compost bin. Having separate containers in your kitchen for recycled newspapers, paper, cardboard, tins and glass will make your recycling job easier. If space is a constraint, consider an upright recycling bin next to the garbage so that you will be less likely to toss out a recyclable item, then you can sort your recycling when the time is available.
5. Buy recycled products. Look for products and packaging made from recycled materials, they are widely available in everything from toilet tissue to office supplies. Consider buying re-cycled eco-friendly gift wrapping, or gently used clothing or recycled building supplies.

 Now, more than ever, recycling is accessible, affordable and easy.  Recycling can have a positive and sustaining impact on the environment, so keep your eyes open for the Recycle Symbol on products you buy. Be eco-minded and asses your product choices, and think of recycling alternatives before you throw something away.

While many laundry detergents promise “safe” and “gentle” cleaning and a “fresh” scent, experts have raised the red flag on many of the ingredients contained in conventional laundry detergents, suspecting them of causing short term health risks and of causing long-term harm.  Conventional laundry products contain a range of chemical compounds that can irritate your skin and eyes, trigger allergic reactions or asthma, and damage the environment.  While there are a lack of long-term studies on these cleaning compounds, scientists suspect that some of these chemicals cause cancer, while others disrupt the endocrine system and can interfere with human and wildlife reproductive health.   Some of the chemical compounds you should avoid in laundry detergents include:

Chlorine – found primarily in laundry bleach, but is also found in some detergents, chlorine vapours are known to irritate the lungs, eyes, and mucous membranes and can trigger respiratory disorders and damage the environment.

Optical brighteners - used to brighten or whiten fabrics, many optical brighteners come from benzene, a highly toxic compound and carcinogen that can cause allergic reactions when it comes into contact with the skin.  It is also harmful to wildlife and the environment.

Surfactants –  these compounds create the bubbles and suds in laundry detergents. The most commonly used surfactants, alkyl phenol ethoxylates (APEs) are classified as endocrine disruptors.

Fragrances -  the chemicals that give conventional laundry detergents their fresh scent can irritate skin, cause allergic reactions and trigger asthma.  Some ingredients are known carcinogens and many fragrances contain Phthalates, and should be avoided.

There are healthier alternatives to these chemical compounds.  Instead of chlorine, look for a natural laundry detergent containing Hydrogen Peroxide, which breaks down into water and oxygen, or that uses Sodium Percarbonate, made by combining hydrogen peroxide with sodium carbonate (a nontoxic mineral).  These healthier alternatives brighten your whites as effectively as chlorine, without the negative health or environmental implications. Instead of optical brightening chemicals, choose a product using natural enzyme cultures to remove stains safely. Also, a detergent using surfactants derived from corn, coconut, and soy to create gentle sudsing action will have much less impact on the environment and human health.  Look for an unscented natural cleaning products or if you prefer a naturally scented laundry detergent look for a product containing natural essential oils or citrus oils to add a fresh, light scent to your laundry. While some natural laundry products cost a bit more than conventional brands, they are well worth it.  High quality, natural laundry detergents will provide a healthy cleaning, leaving your clothes both fresh and clean.

A new crop of fabrics being made from unconventional materials such as bamboo, soy, and hemp are emerging and as awareness grows about cotton’s downsides, these unconventional fabrics are garnering more attention.  Fabrics produced from hemp have long captured the eco-minded consumer’s imagination, being cultivated for use in clothing and other products for thousands of years.  While hemp requires few, if any, insecticides or herbicides to grow and produces long, strong fibres suitable for clothing and other products, hemp production remains heavily regulated in the U.S.  Consequently, most hemp grown for cloth is imported from China and Eastern Europe, and the price for most hemp goods remains relatively high.

Of the new fabrics to emerge, bamboo has perhaps garnered the most attention.  Bamboo has become a popular fabric, not only because of its sustainability (bamboo requires few, if any, pesticides to grow) but also because of its versatility.  With a surprising softness and sheen, bamboo fabric is popular with a number of innovative clothing designers, who are incorporating bamboo fabric into everything from t-shirts to designer dresses. The naturally antibacterial, quick-drying, absorbent bamboo material also lends itself well to a variety of athletic wear.  And bamboo’s surprising softness and sheen makes it a popular choice for many household products, from bamboo bed sheets, to bamboo bath towels and table linens.

A less common, but equally promising material is soy fabric.  Developed in China in 1999, soy fabric is still primarily in its developmental stages.  Soy fibres are created by extracting proteins from the remainders of tofu production and fusing these proteins with organic compounds to create a fibre strong enough to be spun into yarn.  While the soy fabric’s use is limited, the soybean fibre is beginning to appear in items like socks, sheets, and yoga clothing.  The use of soy fabric and the development of other such unconventional fabrics will continue to expand as the demand for more earth friendly materials continues to grow.

As the amount and variety of chemical compounds used for household cleaning continues to grow, so to should our concern for the increasing contamination to our environment.  As greater varieties of synthetic industrial and household chemicals are being developed and are being used more frequently, the environment is becoming increasingly contaminated by the pollution these chemicals create.  The synthetic chemicals made today do not easily break down into the harmless bits of organic matter that other natural materials do.  Instead, they resist decomposition, and once these persistent chemicals are introduced into our air, water, and soil, they remain in the environment for longer periods of time and accumulate in increasingly greater amounts.

 In our efforts to provide a safe and clean home, we are unintentionally adding chemicals to our environment faster than our environment, and Mother Nature, can break them down and remove them.  The accumulation of persistent household chemicals in our environment is growing rapidly, and people are encountering higher amounts of unseen chemical pollution much more often in the course of daily life.  If we do not want this increasing toxic load to be this generation’s legacy, we must reduce our use of these chemical compounds.  Choosing organic, natural cleaning products is one of the quickest and easiest ways of reducing chemicals in our homes.  With an increasing variety of natural and organic household cleaners available, simple choices on the products we use to wash our floors or do our laundry or dishes, can add up to a healthier home and environment for our family.

With the festivities of Christmas and New Years behind us, it is time to take a little rest, relaxation….and maybe just a little pampering to start the New Year.   A warm soak in a hot bath is always a nice way to unwind at the end of a day….not to mention the end of a busy Christmas season.   The comfort of a hot soak and a warm plush towel go a long way to sooth the soul and to relax the body and mind.

Earth friendly bamboo towels are the perfect finishing touch to a warm bath.  Bamboo towels give you plush softness with a silky touch, combined with absorbency that surpasses cotton. While bamboo towels are known for their durability, the bamboo fibre is also naturally hypo-allergenic and odour resistant.  Bamboo towels are soft, plush and comforting; so go ahead and indulge yourself in this natural luxury.  Bamboo towels are not only beneficial for our environment; they are good for your body and soul.