Some days I fall victim to the green noise syndrome; I’m so overloaded by the green options all around me I don’t know where to go. Bath and cleaning products are one place I always thought I had it right. If I buy the organic, I’m good to go. Or am I?

I just learned last week that in March, Seventh Generation, Method, and other companies that produced green cleaning products were under scrutiny by the Organic Consumers Association. When testing around a hundred “cosmetic, personal care and household cleaning formulas, [the Association] found that nearly 50% of them contained detectable levels of 1,4-dioxane, which is known to cause cancer in lab animals.” Method, Planet Ultra and Seventh Generation’s “natural” dish cleaning products were among those products that tested positive. All manufacturer’s who tested for 1,4 were asked to remove their “organic” and “natural” labels or they’d face a lawsuit. Just when I thought I was cleaning consciously, I have to go through another round of making change in my lifestyle.

My confusion about what to buy got even greater this week when I found out California was taking more “organic” companies to court. Avalon (Alba), Nutribiotic and Whole Foods are all facing penalties for producing products containing 1,4-dioxane, too. Present in most common bath/body/cleaning products, 1,4-dixoane is not only a carcinogen but has been shown to cause liver and kidney damage simply by “breathing, ingesting” or touching it.

If you’re wondering, like I was, who is a safe choice to buy these days, Burt’s Bees, Clorox Green Works and Dr. Bronner’s all tested 1,4 free. See the results of the 1,4 test here.

Excerpted with permission from Raising Baby Green: The Earth-Friendly Guide to Pregnancy, Childbirth and Baby Care by Jossey-Bass, A John Wiley & Sons Imprint.

For such a little person, a baby sure goes through a lot of laundry: diapers, bibs, sleepers, undershirts, blankets, sheets, socks, pants . . . and of course all the items the baby spits up on that also need to be cleaned—often. That’s why having a baby in the house turns the mundane washer and dryer into wonder machines of incredible convenience. This increase in laundry loads is also a good reason for you to focus your green efforts on the laundry room.

The Green Washing Machine

If you’re buying a new washer, remember to look for Energy Star models. Traditional top-loading washing machines use about forty gallons of water per load, whereas Energy Star washers use only about 25 gallons per load. That’s a 40 percent savings in water, which translates into an energy cost savings of almost 50 percent.10Make that new machine a front-loader. Front-loading machines work on a horizontal axis that saves both water and energy. A top-loading machine must be filled with water in order to keep the clothing wet and then an agitator swirls the water around, but a front-loading machine uses less water because the tub does not need to be filled completely; the tub itself rotates, making the clothes tumble in the water.

These machines also reduce the energy needed for drying clothes because they spin clothes faster than top-loading machines, which reduces the moisture level before the clothes even enter the dryer. As an extra green bonus, front-loading washers are kinder to your clothing, so your clothes last longer. In comparison to top-loading washing machines, the front-loaders use 50 percent less energy and a third less water. With those savings, it will pay for itself in six years and should last for ten. In addition, a front-loading Energy Star washer will save enough energy annually to light your entire home for a month and a half, and it saves as much water in a year as the average person drinks in a lifetime.

Laundry Detergent

While you’re looking for ways to go green in the laundry room, don’t overlook your detergent. You’ll find that it’s easy to make the switch to green detergents that are plant based (corn, palm kernel, or coconut oil) and to non-chlorine-bleach products made from sodium percarbonate or sodium perborate. For those laundry tasks that require special attention, think simple and homemade. • For stains, try soaking fabrics in water mixed with one of the following:Borax, lemon juice, hydrogen peroxide, or white vinegar.

• For fabric softening, add a quarter cup of baking soda to the wash cycle.

• For static cling, add a quarter cup of white vinegar to the wash water.

• To soften water, use a soap-based, rather than detergent-based, cleaner.

• Buy laundry products in containers that are recyclable. There are very good reasons for making the switch to a green product. Most conventional laundry detergents are made from petroleum— a nonrenewable resource. They don’t readily biodegrade, and they threaten wildlife after they go down the drain. Many also contain chemical fragrances and phosphates (which build up in streams and lakes, upset the natural balance, and starve fish of the oxygen they need to survive). They also contain chemicals linked to cancer and reproductive problems. That’s just plain bad for the earth and for your family.

Chlorine bleach should also be banned from your laundry room. This popular whitener and disinfectant is highly caustic; when it goes from your drain into the natural world, it can create organochlorines, which are suspected carcinogens as well as reproductive, neurological, and immune system toxins. They also damage the earth’s ozone layer.

Washing and Drying Tips to Try Today

· When you have several loads to wash, do them back-to-back so you can use the residual heat in the dryer.

· Run the washing machine only when you have a full load.

· Wash with cold water to save 80 to 90 percent of the energy costs of washing.

· To prevent static cling, add one cup white vinegar to the rinse cycle, using your washing machine’s dispenser. Static cling, by the way, is caused by using synthetic fabrics, so you could also switch to cotton. The vinegar also kills bacteria and prevents the buildup of detergent residue. Remove the laundry before it’s overdried.

· Clean out the dryer’s lint trap after every load to improve circulation and reduce energy use.

· Air dry whenever possible using indoor racks or an outdoor line. This conserves energy—and your clothes. They will not wear out or fade as quickly. (You’ll also save about seven hundred pounds of carbon dioxide over six months of warm weather.)

· Remove clothing from the dryer before the cycle ends and line dry to finish. This conserves energy and increases the life span of the clothing.

· Avoid using dryer sheets to soften fabrics. They often contain harsh chemicals that can irritate sensitive skin. Soften fabric with baking soda in the wash cycle. Try a commercial green fabric softener like Natural Choices Home Safe Products’ Safe ’n Soft, Ecover’s Natural Fabric Softener, or Sun & Earth’s Ultra Fabric Softener.

© Copyright 2008 by Dr. Alan Greene.

I recently persuaded her to try a few organic products and, low and behold, she has been very pleased with the results. So … here are a few tips to getting your parents, friends, mother-in-laws and other skeptics to slowly embrace healthy alternatives.

1. Organic mac and cheese. Easy. It costs a tad more than the standard (and Kraft now offers an organic version), but the argument against that unnatural orange color was enough to convince my skeptic. She tried Annie’s Organic and said her son happily gobbled every last bite.
2. Eco-friendly dish soap and dishwashing detergent. This one took a bit of selling on my part. I went out and purchased a bottle of Seventh Generation dish soap (citrus scent) and left it at her house. After a few days of trying it (and reading the back of the bottle) she agreed that it was nice to be able to pronounce all the ingredients.
3. Eco-friendly sunscreen. Being fair-skinned herself, she was no stranger to purchasing large amounts of sunscreen. I emailed her the health report of popular sunscreens at the Environmental Working Group’s site. And sent her a link to Jennifer’s great post. She was horrified to see the rating of the product she regularly bought and slathered all over herself and her son.

I’m convinced that once you start educating yourself and others there is no turning back. Next on my agenda is getting her to replace one produce item with an organic version.

What are your tips to converting stubborn friends and family?

Photo Credit: Creative Commons license by Jspatchwork on Flickr.

With the Eco-Me Home Kit, you provide the white vinegar, baking soda, olive oil, and water, and you’ve got everything you need to make an all-purpose cleaner, a wood polish cleanser, and a scrub cleanser, too — at a fraction of the cost of most store-bought non-toxic cleaners.

The Eco-Me Home Kit contains:
2 spray bottles for mixing spray cleaner and polish
1 jar for mixing scrub cleanser
1 natural bristle scrub brush
1 handy mixer
1 microfiber cleaning cloth
1 bottle Eco-Me Home Cleaning Essential Oil
1 natural fiber storage bag
Easy to follow instructions on how to mix ingredients (right from your own kitchen).

The essential oil contains tea tree, lemongrass, rosemary, and lavender pure plant oils, and helps purge surfaces of mold, mildew, grime, and water stains (plus it smells great!). The kit is available at eZoetic.com for $26.00, and you’ll also find an Eco-Me Baby Kit, Eco-Me Cat Kit, and Eco-Me Dog Kit there, too. Now it’s easier than ever to “green-it-yourself!”

Eco-Me is a company that provides 100% natural eco kits. I call them “starter kits,” as they’re an easy way to get started using more environmentally-friendly products. In fact, you mix these yourself so you know exactly what has gone into them.

They currently have five kits: Home, Body, Baby, Dog and Cat kits. Not owning a dog or cat (or baby for that matter), it was the Home kit that I was sent for review.

Containing two empty reusable plastic bottles, a reusable tub, a microfiber cleaning cloth, natural fiber scrub brush and a small bottle of Home Blend essential oil, the large box bag it comes in was pleasantly light. The two bottles are for “All Purpose Spray Cleaner” and “Wood Polish Spray Cleaner” with the tub being for “Home Scrub Cleaner.” Each one has really simple instructions on the side and a measurement guide. For example, pour white vinegar up to this mark on the label, water up to this mark, and then 1 unit of essential oil.

The essential oil is there to cover the smell of the other household ingredients. It’s a mix of Tea Tree, Lavender, Rosemary, and Lemongrass, and only a few drops are usually needed. Creating the cleaning products was so easy it was almost untrue. Surely these can’t be as good as all those weird chemicals?! Creating the scrub cleaner was actually fun: the initial pour of baking soda into the vinegar and water mix, and resultant foaming expansion reminded me of several school chemistry experiments that went awry. This was fine though :). The wood cleaner includes the addition of olive oil, which makes for a nice addition to the experiments.

So, how well did they work?

Well the all-purpose cleaner works perfectly fine, though the vinegar smell isn’t the best in the world. I am the first to say that “clean” has no smell (certainly not pine), but vinegar is not my first choice of smell for the bathroom. This isn’t malt vinegar, else I would have been delighted my bathroom smelt like fish and chips (pass the ketchup); no, this is white vinegar. Another half unit of the essential oils did the trick, and it was now nice and naturally scented. Cleaning-wise, the vinegar cleans, deodorizes and kills bacteria, so no need for anything else except the water to dilute it and the oil to scent it. In the scrub, the baking soda did all I needed it to, i.e. clean, so again it seems a great alternative.

By using natural, chemical-free and non-toxic ingredients, I certainly felt better about the cleaning. As mentioned, Eco-Me provides plenty of kits, and ranging from $26 to $36 they’re not expensive. Refill kits are cheap (for the oil, cloths, etc) so one kit will last you a long time. Coupled with the fact they can be made up with what’s in your kitchen cupboard, it will be a long time before you feel the need to buy any cleaning products at the grocery store. Their website also has some great eco tips, so take a look.

Go here for more eco product reviews.

In business, going green is more than a marketing slogan: it's the new way of doing things. It's an edge -- a method by which you can improve your company's bottom line while acting responsibly toward your customers, employees, and the environment.

Back home, you've swapped your incandescent bulbs for CFLs; installed low-flow shower heads, weather stripping and an electronic thermostat; you're eating more local and organic foods; and recycling is finally second nature.

Good job. But how does one scale personal progress in green living to the more complex structures of the 21st Century workplace? At home, you have full control. But in a business setting, there are co-workers, customers, and possibly investors involved -- and nobody is ever in a hurry to change traditional operating practices. Bringing sustainability into the workplace is a long-term commitment, whether you're responsible for two employees or two thousand.

The good news is this: green business is profitable business. So. to help you get started, Lighter Footstep has rounded-up twelve specific specific actions you can take to starting greening the way you work. Pick a few, drop them into your organizer, and let's get started!

So what is “green” cleaning exactly? Green cleaning means using cleaning products that don’t endanger you, children, or the environment.

Many people use cleaning products throughout their homes without a thought or concern. They figure that if the product is widely available that it must be relatively safe for use. But these products contain all kinds of chemicals that can potentially be toxic, corrosive, flammable, or reactive. They can also cause serious health issues and environmental damage. Here are some examples of common chemicals found in conventional cleaning supplies:

• Formaldehyde
• Sodium Hypochlorite
• Petroleum Solvents
• Sodium Acid Sulfate

Some of the problems associated with these chemicals are skin irritations, nausea, headaches, nose bleeds, shortness of breath, burns, vomiting, kidney and liver damage, and exposure to carcinogens. Do you want to clean your home with chemicals that have the potential for that kind of damage? Certainly not...don’t take that chance.

The Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ) has challenged Walt Disney World Resort to switch to environmentally friendly, non-toxic cleaning products and practices throughout their operations. According to CHEJ, Disney World avoids using toxic cleaners in their Animal Kingdom but not in their theme parks, hotels or restaurants.

The "Disney Go Green Campaign" sponsored by CHEJ and several Florida activist organizations, kicked off the 2007 Florida Environmental Health and Organizing Conference on Friday. Part of the campaign effort uses the animated characters from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves as spokespeople. On the CHEJ website Grumpy says,

"I'm Grumpy that Disney uses certified green cleaning products to protect the health of animals in Animal Kingdom, but not everywhere else to protect children and me!" [Followed by a factoid] Disney uses green cleaning products in Animal Kingdom and three of its fifteen hotels. They know how to do it!

Here are a few tips on how to freshen the air inside your home:

Like Rebecca's Tip O' The Day noted earlier, baking soda is a wonderful, earth-friendly cleaning product you can get almost anywhere on the cheap. Borax, white vinegar, and cream of tartar are just a few items you can use to make safe, non-toxic cleaning products. This site has plenty of recipes if you want to eschew commercial products completely. However, if you are not into the DIY scene, there are a plethora of cleaning products out there that are non-toxic and biodegradable. I've used several, and these are some of the lines that have produced favorable results.