The Walt Disney Corporation, in a letter to Greenpeace in 2003, said that “the Walt Disney Company is always concerned with quality and safety”. Greenpeace decided to test that statement, so – as part of their campaign to show how dangerous chemicals are out of control, turning up in house dust, in household products, food, …
Alkylphenol ethoxylates (APEOs – often called alkyphenols or alkylphenyls) are surfactants which have an emulsifying and dispersing action, so they have good wetting, penetration, emulsification, dispertion, solubilizing and washing characteristics. This makes them suitable for a very large variety of applications: they’ve been used for over 50 years in a wide variety of products. In …
I went to the stores this week, looking for presents (as it’s the season), and was bombarded with slogan after slogan of companies trying to make their product stand out from the crowd. It made me think about the journey I’ve personally taken since founding O Ecotextiles – going from somebody who was totally clueless, to …
Water. Our lives depend on it. It’s so plentiful that the Earth is sometimes called the blue planet – but freshwater is a remarkably finite resource that is not evenly distributed everywhere or to everyone. The number of people on our planet is growing fast, and our water use is growing even faster. About 1 …
What does it take to change human behavior? We have known that lead is poisonous ever since the Romans began sprinkling it on their food as a sweetener. Lead was used so extensively in Rome (for metal pots, wine urns, water pipes and plates) that some Romans began to suspect a connection between the metal …
Apparently Good Housekeeping now has a green seal of approval. UL laboratories, the safety test lab, also has it’s own green seal of approval. In fact, according to the new 2009 Conscious Consumer Report from BBMG, there are now over 400 different certifications related to “green” and environmental attributes of products and services. So many …
I had a blog post about genetically modified organisims (GMOs) all ready to go, but then I got Sunday’s New York Times (September 13, 2009) with a front page story about rising incidences of violations of the Clean Water Act in the U.S.: more than half a million violations in the last five years alone. …
Researchers have come to a greater understanding of the multiple factors that influence obesity, which of course include our diet, but also our hormones, bio-individuality, epigenetics and increasingly, the environment. While lack of activity, poor diet, and genetics are frequently blamed for this problem, could there be other factors in the environment affecting our weight …
“Going personally green is a bet, nothing more or less, though it’s one we probably all should make, even if the odds of it paying off aren’t great. Sometimes you have to act as if it will make a difference, even when you can’t prove that it will.” Michael Pollan Our children today live in …
Our previous blog post we talked about fabric – how to determine the quality of the fabric you’re considering for your new sofa. But the most important consideration merits a blog all its own, and that is the safety of the fabrics you’ve chosen. We define “safe” as a fabric that has been processed with …
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