After my last blog post (and plug for Seventh Generation Baby Wipes), I got an email from Meghan Butler of Seventh Generation! She saw my post on homemade baby wipes (as well as my plug) and alerted me to a new online tool that this company is providing to help you, whether you’re a parent of an allergic child or not.
It’s called the Show the World What’s Inside platform.
Butler’s email to me said, “We believe that as consumers, we not only have the right to know what’s inside the products we use, we have a right to understand those ingredients. So we took the unprecedented step of creating a Label Reading Guide to make decision-making easier either on your web-enabled phone, or in the comfort of your own home. We canvassed the entire cleaning aisle for ingredients and phrases we either don’t fully understand – or at all – and set out to explain them.”
I think this is a fabulous resource. You can find ways to become part of the solution to the onslaught of chemicals in our environment, from informing yourself to taking direct action through signing the petition for the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act. You can also more easily avoid any of the chemicals to which you are allergic or sensitive.
I have to say: it’s this kind of action on the part of Seventh Generation that drove me to buy baby products from them. Seventh Generation has a history of putting their money where their mouths are. That sold me. I didn’t just use their baby wipes; I also used their diapers, despite a higher price tag than “conventional” disposables. I’ve also bought other parts of their product lines, from dish detergent to toilet paper.
Personally, I like their philosophy, which is based on a native North American practice of reviewing tribal decisions through their projected impacts to the seventh generation. If we all operated this way, would we have so much throw-away goods? Would land fill be a way of life? Would we blithely add chemicals to our lives without true long term studies? Would anything trump a clean and healthy environment?
I think not.
Which brings me back to the topic of allergies. In the developed world (the key consumer of all these unnatural chemicals and throw-away “goods”), our allergy rates are skyrocketing. Is it possible that our twin addictions to convenience and profit are actually poisoning us?
These are questions we need to consider.
Tools such as those provided by Seventh Generation can help us to consider these questions while also letting us shop smart. You can download their handy widget to your computer or your web-enabled mobile phone. You may have to pay a bit more for products that keep you healthy, but what’s more important?
