Seventh Generation
Nov. 19th, 2007 05:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tmcgAs many of you are well aware, I am not a very domestic person, so this is a weird post for me to be making...but lately I've been trying to clean greener, and as I'm also trying to update my journal more often, voilà, an entry about environmentally friendlier household products.
I started out by substituting things like baking soda and vinegar for general-purpose cleaners because I didn't want to mop the floors and clean the carpets and bathroom with stuff that could poison my pets, and that's worked out fantastically well. The past couple of weeks I've been trying Seventh Generation products--paper towels, laundry detergent, trash bags, and so on. I figured that if I found environmentally friendlier stuff that worked as well as what I'd been using, I'd be willing to switch over even though it does cost more. (Paper towels especially; like any pet owner, I go through a ridiculous amount of paper toweling, no matter how good I try to be about using washable cloths instead.) I used a drugstore.com coupon to pick up some things from the site's Seventh Generation store, and then found a whole shelf of SG products in my local supermarket and grabbed a roll of the toilet paper to try too.
I haven't done a lick of research into claims like this made by the company...
...but they sure sound good, and here's what I thought of the stuff I tried.
Wholehearted thumbs-up on the liquid laundry detergent and the dishwashing liquid. Works as well as Era or Tide and Dawn in the same amounts. I'm converted.
Thumbs-up on the kitchen-can trash bags. User reviews complained about them tearing easily, but I have to wonder what the hell those people were stuffing into their trash. We're pretty hard on trash bags here, and nary a poke-through to report, never mind catastrophic breakage.
Thumbs-up on the (natural brown) paper toweling. Kevin grumbles a four-letter word at it every now and then because he's a loyal Bounty user, but as far as I'm concerned it's a worthwhile compromise for the recycled content: it feels flimsier and less absorbent than Bounty, but in service it's perfectly good. It doesn't fall apart during vigorous scrubbing of things like cast-iron pans, it absorbs just fine, and I don't find that I'm using two sheets to do the job one sheet of Bounty would do.
Not-a-thumbs-down on the toilet paper. It's definitely harder and more industrial-feeling than ScotTissue, my usual brand--and, granted, I don't like the fluffy perfumy stuff like Charmin--but using it is not, IMO, the horrific scratchy experience some user reviews reported. Nevertheless, I don't think we'll be adopting this one. After we finished up the roll I'd bought, I said to Kevin, "So, how much did you hate that toilet paper?" Having used the test paper without complaint and having been admirably silent on the topic until I brought it up, he promptly said, "I went from Charmin to ScotTissue to sandpaper." I'll be satisfied with doing my part for the environment by using the other products. :)
Oh, and I almost forgot: Thumbs-up on the facial tissue too. Just as good as Kleenex, and a lot of people around here have had bad colds lately, so testing was extensive.
Now to hope I can find this stuff cheaper in quantity at a place like BJ's or Costco.
I started out by substituting things like baking soda and vinegar for general-purpose cleaners because I didn't want to mop the floors and clean the carpets and bathroom with stuff that could poison my pets, and that's worked out fantastically well. The past couple of weeks I've been trying Seventh Generation products--paper towels, laundry detergent, trash bags, and so on. I figured that if I found environmentally friendlier stuff that worked as well as what I'd been using, I'd be willing to switch over even though it does cost more. (Paper towels especially; like any pet owner, I go through a ridiculous amount of paper toweling, no matter how good I try to be about using washable cloths instead.) I used a drugstore.com coupon to pick up some things from the site's Seventh Generation store, and then found a whole shelf of SG products in my local supermarket and grabbed a roll of the toilet paper to try too.
I haven't done a lick of research into claims like this made by the company...
If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 25 oz. petroleum based dishwashing liquid with our 25 oz. vegetable based product, we could save 81,000 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 4,600 U.S. homes a year!
...but they sure sound good, and here's what I thought of the stuff I tried.
Wholehearted thumbs-up on the liquid laundry detergent and the dishwashing liquid. Works as well as Era or Tide and Dawn in the same amounts. I'm converted.
Thumbs-up on the kitchen-can trash bags. User reviews complained about them tearing easily, but I have to wonder what the hell those people were stuffing into their trash. We're pretty hard on trash bags here, and nary a poke-through to report, never mind catastrophic breakage.
Thumbs-up on the (natural brown) paper toweling. Kevin grumbles a four-letter word at it every now and then because he's a loyal Bounty user, but as far as I'm concerned it's a worthwhile compromise for the recycled content: it feels flimsier and less absorbent than Bounty, but in service it's perfectly good. It doesn't fall apart during vigorous scrubbing of things like cast-iron pans, it absorbs just fine, and I don't find that I'm using two sheets to do the job one sheet of Bounty would do.
Not-a-thumbs-down on the toilet paper. It's definitely harder and more industrial-feeling than ScotTissue, my usual brand--and, granted, I don't like the fluffy perfumy stuff like Charmin--but using it is not, IMO, the horrific scratchy experience some user reviews reported. Nevertheless, I don't think we'll be adopting this one. After we finished up the roll I'd bought, I said to Kevin, "So, how much did you hate that toilet paper?" Having used the test paper without complaint and having been admirably silent on the topic until I brought it up, he promptly said, "I went from Charmin to ScotTissue to sandpaper." I'll be satisfied with doing my part for the environment by using the other products. :)
Oh, and I almost forgot: Thumbs-up on the facial tissue too. Just as good as Kleenex, and a lot of people around here have had bad colds lately, so testing was extensive.
Now to hope I can find this stuff cheaper in quantity at a place like BJ's or Costco.
