Saturday, May 31, 2008

Mother's going GREEN Day 5 - Ignorance is Bliss

Today was a challenging day in the life of this Mother's going Green. After doing some research on cloth diapers and the detergent I would need to wash them, I realised that all too many of the products we use on a daily basis are full of harmful toxins.

It was just over two weeks ago, when I would not have given this a second thought. I used what I used because well it is for sale, its marketed, it's on the shelves at the store and well pretty much everybody uses it. How "blissful" it was to be "ignorant". But gone are those days - I am more aware now. Although, today I wished I was not.
Take for instance laundry detergent: the sweet smell of clean is not really sweet at all. It is synthetic fragrances which are known to trigger common skin irritants and possible asthma. Then there is what they call "optical brighteners" this is what makes your whites whiter. Well it doesn't really - It a creates a blue hue on your cloths that reflect back white light giving the appearance that your whites are whiter and of course it is toxic.

What gets me is; we wash our cloths to get them clean yet we cover them in chemicals, wear them, which in turn covers our body in these chemicals - Who knew the dangers of washing your clothes and were are the warning lables on these products. Also, as I noted at the store as I tried to obtain the most environmentally friendly detergent that none of them list all the ingredients, which made it so frustrating. I finally did find a detergent that was recommended buy the cloth diaper company and in the book"Green for Life - 200 Simple Eco-Ideas for every day by Gillian Deacon" called Nature Clean so a happy ending to a frustrating search for a simple item: Washing Detergent.

Below a list of sites which talk about the toxins in laundry detergent and everyday household products.
Here is the site were you can purchase Nature Clean laundry detergent or other household cleaners.

1 comment:

Craig Baird said...

Wonderful post.
I could not agree more. I often wish I could be ignorant like so many others and not know so much about the environment and what is going on. I think life would be a lot simpler if that was the case.