SBWire: OurGreenHome.co Begins Selling Dirty Diva Soaps

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OurGreenHome.co Begins Selling Dirty Diva Soaps
Our Green Home www.ourgreenhome.co has made a purchase of bar shampoo, conditioner and shaving soap from Dirty Diva Soaps, available for its online retail website.

You may read the full press release by visiting:
http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/natural-soaps/bar-shampoo/sbwire-398689.htm

The plight of an eco business

 As small business owners we want to sell items that people want and need. Hopefully products that people need a lot of, ideally something they use once and then need to purchase again. This is exactly in conflict with our mission at Our Green Home. To be an environmentalist is to continually be trying to use less. To discover ways to use less paper, plastic, water, energy and anything else that contributes to greenhouse gasses. In fact the whole idea of consumerism is repugnant to environmentalism. An environmentalist is to go without to some degree, to use less and use more labor intensive, but less disposable products for our needs. An example, reusable diapers vs. disposable diapers.

Our search for “green” products has taken us in different directions than I first thought we would go. I thought we’d be selling solar panels, wind mills and LED light bulbs. We have evolved into more everyday home items that save paper, plastic and energy on a more micro level. We have found a few consumable, items that people need to repurchase everyday like gift wrapping paper made from recycled paper. It’s a little more expensive than the plasticized single use gift-wrap you get from Target. Our paper having been made from recycled, post consumer paper products and can be recycled again into new paper products. It is consumable and eco friendly.

Another product is bar shampoo, conditioner and lotions. Our bar products are consumables that customers need to re-purchase. These are made by small, some local craft soap makers using all natural ingredients and packaged in paper or cellophane. Another environmental advantage being you are not buying a plastic bottle. With the oceans clogging with plastic waste, every plastic bottle not created is a small victory. We also sell recycled plastic products, but not creating disposable plastic material is our first goal.

We have found some one-time purchase items like Green Toys^tm. Green toys are made from recycled plastic milk jugs. Recycling plastic into a sturdy, safe toy for your children is the kind of consumerism we are trying to promote.  These toys use no BPA, PVC, or phthalates and are packaged using only recycled and recyclable materials. This is a great company with products we are proud to sell.

We are obviously a small player in the retail consumer product space. We do not to ever expect to compete with Wal-Mart or Target or thousands of other retailers. However if they were to start handling some of these products our mission would be half done. If Target for example started to sell exclusively products with green properties (recycled, renewable, biodegradable, save paper, plastic, water and/or energy) then our mission would be done and we would have succeeded in making the world a better place.

By the way we do sell LED light bulbs, water saving shower heads and other hardware for your home.

Recycled Plastic, Good or Bad

We all hate plastic. We hate plastic food containers, plastic water bottles, plastic shopping bags, plastic product packaging (I really hate blister packaging), and all the little crappy toys and nick-knacks that we see in every convenience store. We hate plastic in the oceans, in the landfills,  anywhere in the environment and the chemicals from plastic in the food chain.

My wife Peggy and I are eco consumers. We use reusable bags, bottles and cups. In our household we don’t buy anything or at least resist purchasing items with plastic packaging, and if we have to we will pay more for something not packaged in plastic, or at least in recycled/recyclable plastic and everything that can, does go in the recycling bin. We use bar soap, bar shampoo, bar shaving soap & a brush and refill glass bottles for other household products. Lately we have been relaxing some because our city started accepting any plastic with a recycling label, numbers 1-7. Most, but not all packaging is one of those so we’ve been buying more things in or made from plastic.

Then I discovered the Plastic Pollution Coalition website through some tweets I’ve been receiving. This opened my eyes (again) about the serious nature of plastic pollution. The realization that 93% of recyclable plastic produced is NOT recycled. Even when it is recycled, it’s energy intensive, and the new product is still many times, thrown away.

My question for the reader is should we discourage recycled/recyclable plastic? Peggy and I have a small online store that sells some recycled plastic items, bowls & utensils and we sell BioBags biodegradable plastic-like bags for the kitchen. They are all great products, but are they equally bad for the environment as virgin plastic? My thought is no, but they may not be much better for the environment than virgin plastic.

While I still think that as a nation & society, in the mean-time, we need to recycle all plastic that exists, but we really have to stop making any new plastic.

We as consumers need to demand better packaging options from wherever we buy anything. Write that letter to Costco, Target, & Wal-Mart to stop selling items packaged in plastic or items made from virgin plastic. If you buy durable items like benches, picnic tables or waste baskets, buy ones that are not plastic preferably or made from recycled plastic as a second choice. Look for the products that have recycling information on the package, if there isn’t any, don’t buy it.

We as citizens should pass laws to limit the manufacture of virgin plastic. Until plastic can be recycled and re-recycled like aluminum cans, no consumer item can be made from virgin plastic. All plastic products and packaging should have recycling information on it. More money needs to be spent on recycling programs and more research into the health risks that plastic in the environment creates. Existing plastics need to be recycled into fence posts, telephone poles or something that doesn’t get thrown into a landfill or worn down into microscopic bits that end-up in our food, water, and us.

Chemicals from plastic are in our food chain, therefore in us and in our children. It may be a small thing for one person to write a letter or use a reusable cup, or recycle a yogurt cup, but when all of us do it we become a market force and it makes the governments and corporations react in a positive way.

Three Key Words That Can Lead Your Search for a Cleaner Planet.

Sustainable, Ecological, Green

A few weeks ago I needed to change the oil in my Honda Insight. Being new to the area I thought I would look for an auto parts store to purchase oil for my car. As I sat down at my computer to search, I had a strange thought. I wonder if there is any earth friendly oil on the market. So I typed “Green Oil” and low and behold there were several manufactures of bio oil, and reprocessed used oil.

Motor oil is not something you may think of as environmental. When we think of sustainable or earth friendly products we think of solar panels, bamboo cutting boards or hemp clothing, not motor oil. Now when you search for batteries or motor oil or a host of other products we use every day we hardly ever think about looking for an environmental alternative. Sure we have our favorite products, old stand bys that we have used for years. But just putting the word green in front of my usual search I found something most people would not have thought of to look for.

Of course there are many other words you can use to bring better results, but just getting into the habit of using these words regularly in your searches for everyday products and services can promote the makers of these products and give them more opportunity to influence other manufacturers and companies to invest in green technologies and processes for their businesses.

Of course you have to buy these products. I promptly went to Wal-Mart of all places, and purchased 5 quarts of G-oil, a synthetic bio-recycled blend. It works great and I can take comfort in the fact that I made a small step toward making the Earth a better place.