A Buyer's Guide to Green Products

If you have been reading the Earth to Body blog of late, you will know about our blogger's recent experience of being dupped into buying what she thought was an environmentally safe dish soap.  Well I was dupped as well. On a recent trip to one of Canada's most popular big-box retail stores, I was disappointed to find my favourite dish soap (Biovert) absent from the shelves. I came across another brand labelled as "environmentally responsible" and a little further down on the label "Ultimately biodegradable per ISO 14593, includes renewable plant based cleaning agents, mild on skin."  So I gave it the nose test and it had a lovely, natural citrus smell.  OK, I was sold (and also in a hurry).  Upon returning home I had a better look.  Uh oh - no Ecologo designation - first red flag.  I turned it over and read the ingredients; first one listed was sodium laurel sulfate - second red flag.  While I'm sure I bought a product that may be more 'green' that the majority on the shelves, it did not meet my expectations. 

An easy and fast way to determine if a product is truly enviromentally (and cosmetically) responsible and safe is to look for the Ecologo designation.

What exactly is that and what is the required criteria for a product to receive this designation?  Go to Ecologo's website which will answer these questions and give you listings of environmentally safe products in every consumer category. This is a very handy and reliable reference website.

As well, go to our page which gives a list of harmful ingredients commonly found in cosmetics, lotions and other bodycare products.  Even better, print it out and carry it around with you to refer to when shopping and checking labels. 

This website lists labels and logos you may come across when shopping for environmentally concious consumer products including food and what they mean.

Remember not to be too hard on yourself.  We all have products we find hard to give up. The important thing is to be well-informed and to slowly start to change your buying habits and inform others.  Remember, we all make mistakes (even those of us who should know better!)