Companies with a Conscience

With so many companies today claiming to care about the environment and the health of their consumers, it's hard to know who really means it. The best way to find out which businesses are really making an effort to go green and support sustainable living is to do your research. Check out the website of the company making the claims: does it list (in detail) exactly what steps it is taking to ensure the safety or sustainability of its products? Does it disclose all the ingredients in each of its products? If you email the company to ask a question about its products or manufacturing practices, do you get a specific response to your query (or any response at all)? Another way to find out if a company is really as stoic as it markets itself to be is to Google the name of the business; if there have been any news stories, complaints or feedback (good or bad) about a company's business ethics, they are highly likely to show up here.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have spent a lot of time attempting to determine who's telling the truth when it comes to companies that are truly making an effort to go green. Although I have suffered several let-downs by companies that I was certain (or at least hoping) were not just feeding me a line, in some cases I found myself surprised and encouraged by what I discovered. I'm sure--okay, I really hope--there are hundreds of businesses out there that are doing more than their part to help protect the environment, but here are a few of the ones I've been most impressed with thus far:

Burt's Bees - they are really busting their bee-hinds (sorry) to ensure that products labeled "natural" are just that. Check out the section "Burt's Bill" for more information. And, of course, their products are awesome (especially their Lip Shimmers).

Aveda - aside from their commitment to reduce their carbon footprint by using wind energy to power their manufacturing plant in Minnesota, Aveda discloses all of the ingredients in each and every one of their products. Their customer service team was also quick and thorough when responding to my email query as to why they use a certain ingredient in one of their shampoo products as well as what the source of the ingredient is.

Pottery Barn - they might seem like an unlikely candidate for this list, but stick with me. Pottery Barn is pledging to include a minimum of 5% organic cotton in at least half the sheet sets it offers (they also carry sheets which are made from 100% organic cotton). The idea is that using even minimal amounts of organic cotton will increase demand for and lower the cost of growing the organic cotton--exactly the type of mentality we all should adopt when it comes to organics. And while Pottery Barn may not exactly be famous for bargain basement pricing, their organic sheet sets are selling for considerably less than those I found on many other websites.

This list is by no means complete. I could easily add others: Ecover, Equal Exchange, Seventh Generation, just to name a few. But it's late, and the kids will most likely be up before the sun, eager to start another day, so I will have to continue this thread at another time. If anyone out there has their own favorite organic or eco-friendly products, don't be shy--share them with the rest of us!

Kate

The Ordinary Organic

Information Overload?

No matter how interesting or intriguing a subject may be, too much information about any topic can be overwhelming. Not only are we likely to develop a headache from trying to absorb and comprehend as many facts as possible, but chances are that some sources will directly contradict others, making it difficult (if not impossible) for the seeker of the information to discern between truth and myth. My desire to know all there is to know about organic foods and eco-friendly products has prompted me to borrow no fewer than a dozen books from my local library. In fact, I’ve been to the library so often in the past few weeks that when the librarian sees me walking towards the circulation desk, she smiles and immediately goes to the ‘holds’ shelf to gather the most recent books waiting to be added to my impressively lengthy list of checked-out volumes (if there is a limit on the number of books a library patron can have checked out at one time, I am sure that I am rapidly approaching that number). And being no stranger to academic research and conflicting theories, I was fully expecting a fair amount of head-butting between texts. I had decided at the outset that I would assemble my data, pick out the parts that made sense to me, and go from there. My one hope was that I wouldn’t become discouraged and overwhelmed, either by an overload of scientific jargon or by inflexible demands that I throw away everything I own, tear down the toxic dump otherwise known as my house, and start living off the land.

To my immense surprise (and relief), all of the books I have consulted thus far have offered nothing but some gentle advice, a fair amount of common sense, and a great deal of information that is astonishingly consistent. Even the books written or edited by people from different countries—most often the U.S. and Britain—agree on virtually everything, from recipes for concocting all-purpose cleaning products from vinegar and baking soda to the best tasting heirloom tomatoes to the detrimental effects genetically-modified crops have globally on both the environment and the survival of small farms. What started out as intellectual research quickly became pleasure reading: books bearing titles such as The Gardener’s A-Z Guide to Growing Organic Food vie for space on my bedside table with Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, a rather bizarre yet engrossing novel called The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami and, of course, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. Knowing that I only have until next Tuesday to read freely without guilt—after which I will still probably be reading just as much even though I should be focusing my brain power on French vocabulary and verb conjugation—I have been cramming my brain with far more information about organic and eco-friendly products than it can possibly ever hope to retain. But that’s okay, because despite the overload of information, I get it. I understand what it takes to grow vegetables without the use of chemicals—it’s not rocket science. People were growing food this way long before rockets were invented, just as they were keeping their houses clean using little more than, well, vinegar and baking soda. And while it might seem like a waste of time to read a slew of books that all say pretty much the same thing, for me, just the opposite is true. I find it reassuring to know that no matter which text I consult, the facts remain the same, and I am free to enjoy the anecdotes or personal experiences of the author (which are often more informative than the facts themselves). Being a life-long lover of reading and books in general, there is no greater satisfaction than to finish a book feeling enlightened and entertained, and the books I have recently read on organic and eco-friendly living have not disappointed me.

If you are interested in finding out more about organic and eco-friendly living, I urge you to check out your local library before heading to the bookstore—you’ll save yourself some cash (unless you’re like me and never remember to return the books by their due dates even though the library sends out friendly email reminders in advance. Hey, maybe that’s why the librarian smiles when she sees me come in; she’s thinking “Hey, there’s the girl who bought us five new books last month with all her late fees. With all those books she has checked out now, we should be able to buy a new set of encyclopedias!”) Oh, and you’ll save some trees, too—not that I’m a treehugger or anything.

Kate
The Ordinary Organic

Living Like a King(solver)

I'm not usually one of those people who believes that "everything happens for a reason"--at least, not in the guidance-from-above sense. Yet on the very same day I wrote about localvores and how the idea of self-enforced food restriction wasn't something I was ever likely to try, I began reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle thinking it was a book about eating organic foods. As it turns out, the book chronicles the cross-country relocation of the author and her family from Arizona to Virginia and their decision to eat only locally grown and produced foods for at least one year. Within twenty-four hours, I was devising plans in my head to convert my entire back yard into vegetable beds and contemplating which breed of heritage chickens would be the best type to raise as egg layers. However, I still have that nagging problem of not having access to locally grown and milled flour, not to mention two of my other necessities for life: sugar and coffee. And while I could probably get by for a few months without fresh berries, cantaloupe, and cucumbers, my four- and six-year-old children would not be quite as content to wait for the appropriate seasons for the afore-mentioned to arrive (are you kidding? They can't even wait the fifteen seconds it takes to walk from the toy store to the car before they demand to open it NOW). From what I've read thus far, I've already deduced that I do not possess even one tenth of the patience or self-control that the author and her family seem to exert almost effortlessly when it comes to eating only foods that are in season locally--not in Florida or California or Mexico. I know those blueberries in the grocery store were picked weeks ago and then sat in boxes in trucks or on trains for days, and that blueberries really are not meant to withstand all that travel and still look as fresh as the day they were picked. In the case of conventionally grown berries, the fact that they do look freshly picked should signal to us that these blueberries are packing more than antioxidants. And even the organically grown berries (which are not usually quite as pretty nor do they last as long), although they may be physically chemical-free, are still using up a lot of precious fossil fuels to get from point A to our refrigerators. But my kids really love them, and I hate to deny them the pleasure of eating something as enjoyable (not to mention healthy) as blueberries, especially when I know the reason "they're not really in season right now" would be falling on youthfully deaf ears. Suddenly, eating organic is not as simple as going to Hannaford's and loading my grocery cart with organically grown produce (like I did last week--and I was so proud of myself, too.)

One item I have decided against eating out of season from now on, though, is the tomato. For years, I have been simultaneously disappointed and outraged each time I've ordered a caprese salad in a restaurant, even in a really fantastic restaurant, and the tomatoes have been pale, mealy, and bitter--disappointed because the tomato tastes terrible, and outraged that the restaurant had been so foolish as to have purchased such poor quality produce. Now I understand who the true fool in the scenario is: the same fool who, on a trip to Maine just this past weekend, ordered a pizza with pesto and tomatoes. As soon as the pizza was set down in front of me and I looked at the chunks of barely pink fruits with crystallized flesh sitting in watery puddles on top of the cheese, I thought "Why did I order this? Tomatoes don't grow in Maine in the middle of January." Then and there, I decided I would not eat another fresh tomato until I could pick it myself out of my garden, purchase it from a local farmer, or take it out of my farm box this coming summer. It's not much, but it's a start.

Whether it be the result of divine intervention or pure coincidence, it seems obvious that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is the perfect book for me to be reading at this point in my quest for information and guidance on organic living. Although I have read barely a hundred pages of the Kingsolvers' story, I have already begun to understand what is likely to be the most important lesson I will learn from their localvore experience: in order to live like kings, we should strive to eat like the Kingsolvers.

Kate
The Ordinary Organic