It’s Earth Day, Love your Mother!
In honor of Earth Day, it’s time for another installment of Earth-friendly household item reviews.
As you know, we’re seriously doing what we can to help keep Mother Earth safe and healthy. We also believe that by sharing the good products we find we can make it a bit easier for our friends to do the same. We share with you, you share with us, and we all benefit.
It’s our goal to reduce single-use plastic, shop locally, eat less meat and eliminate fish (fishing is threatening the very life of the ocean) and products with palm in them. (This crop alone may have already destroyed what remains of the rainforests’ ability to serve as the vital carbon sink we once relied on it for.). For a list of other names for palm oil, click here. It’s in nearly everything!
So, on to the products:
The winners are, in no particular order, Humby Organics shampoo, Stasher silicone bags , and Who Gives a Crap (lol!) bamboo toilet paper and recycled paper tissues.
The Humby shampoo is great, haven’t tried the conditioner yet, but the ingredient lists are great and the results are too. There’s none of that weird “sticky” feeling and we love the scents.
Stasher’s silicone ziploc bags come in really useful sizes, they’re easy to wash, and they're not just for the fridge or your lunch, you can freeze foods in them- even liquids. They’re loads better than plastic, aluminum or glass because they’re light and there’s no waste. The downside is the cost. We’ve bought them a couple at a time and think of them as an investment.
Who Gives a Crap paper products with their cheeky name and cute branding style. They are clever and make a really swell product. I was skeptical until I talked with several friends that convinced me to try them out. We ordered a box of the bamboo paper and some boxed tissues and they were on our doorstep within days. We are now saving trees and enjoying all the punny, positive messaging they put on their packaging -- it’s all paper and it’s all adorable. Look them up, order your own and see for yourself, it’s good stuff.
A real difficult upgrade has been laundry products. The liquid soap with the big plastic containers, the cute little pods (what is up with those?!), the stain sticks and sprays, plastic and more plastic!. The fabric softeners at least you can get them without plastic but the chemicals in them are a drag.
Ready to hear the saga of my search?
First, I mixed my own detergent from dry ingredients. This was promising but in the end, it didn’t clean well enough and sometimes didn’t completely dissolve, leaving crusty bits and a white residue on the clothes. Uh-uh! Not good.
Then we tried a bulk detergent from the coop in Brattleboro, which involved a one- time purchase of their plastic jug. It was great, but it was discontinued due to Covid and now we are stuck with that plastic bottle. Sigh!
I recently bought detergent sheets that came in a cardboard box. Very cool. They clean well and are cost effective but guess what? I missed the palm in the ingredient list. Dammit! Everything else about them seemed “right up our (v)alley.” Man that was disappointing.
As far as stain remover goes, there’s a version that comes wrapped in a paper label. Great as far as packaging, but, it cleans only half as well as the commercial products. Bummer!
Lastly, the fabric softener. I really wanted those cute wool balls to work, but they don’t. Just look at he photo. I think you can see there’s a problem here. I even bought a buddy for the first one, and still no luck. Sigh!
There you have it.
We’re plugging away at this because we love our Mother. We know you do too so share your tips and finds and we’ll see a better future for our kids and grandkids.
Happy Earth Day all!