I accept the label of environmentalist that many have applied to me; it is something I may not completely deserve, but something I strive for. But to me, environmentalism doesn’t mean just writing letters or emails, participating in demonstrations, and spray-painting SUVs. Environmentalism means living every part of your life with an awareness of how it affects the environment, and doing what you do while causing the least possible damage – or even while improving the environment.
That said, I am naturally drawn to Seventh Generation, a company that produces non-toxic and environmentally friendly household products, from household cleaners to “feminine hygiene” products. Another reason for my interest in the company is my sensitivity to chemicals; most household cleaning products from grocery and discount stores cause me to have rashes, asthma attacks, headaches, and other symptoms. Prior to trying some of Seventh Generation’s products, I had begun cleaning with white vinegar and baking soda. Those do work, but they require a great deal more effort than, say, Scrubbing Bubbles (TM). As an individual with multiple chronic illnesses, the effort required for cleaning is sometimes too much for me, and I can’t afford a cleaning service. So, I decided to check out Seventh Generation, as I had heard about their products from many people, but not found any in local stores.
The company has been around for over 15 years; they began with a catalog business that offered a small number of energy conservation products. They quickly added other products to the catalog, things like energy-saving light bulbs and toilet paper made from unbleached recycled paper. By 1995, they realized they had too much for one company to do, so they sold the catalog business to Gaiam, a Boulder, Colorado-based company, who renamed it Harmony, and started to manufacture and distribute their growing line of environmentally sound household products. Their name, Seventh Generation, comes from the Great Law Of Peace of the Six Nations Confederacy in the northeastern U.S., which states: “In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” The name was suggested to them by one of their own employees, who is Native American, and they accepted it enthusiastically. While most of their products haven’t reached North Dakota yet, they can be found over most of the country, and on-line at Amazon and Drugstore.com.
I made a mass purchase that included liquid laundry soap, fabric softener, dishwasher soap, liquid dish washing soap, garbage bags, and two feminine products, from Drugstore.com. I ordered enough so that my shipping was free ($65 is the lower limit for free shipping at that site), and waited impatiently for my order to arrive. While I generally avoid scented laundry detergent, since most of them are artificially scented and make me itchy, I decided to get their lavender laundry soap and fabric softener, instead of their unscented ones, because they use real lavender. The bottle of laundry soap cost about $1.50 more than a bottle of Tide that would do the same number of loads, and about $2.25 more than a similar-sized bottle of unscented Gain. I don’t generally use liquid fabric softener, so don’t have a good comparison, but expect it would be about the same. I was disappointed to find that the Seventh Generation laundry soap didn’t remove all the dirt and stains that other detergents have, but it did leave a light fresh scent on my clothing and sheets, without any trace of irritation to my skin or lungs. The fabric softener did a great job, but my laundry room is in the basement, and my old washer requires softener to be added manually at just the right time, so I haven’t always managed to get it in.
The dishwasher soap is priced comparably to most brand name liquids, and again I was disappointed. It has a pleasant citrus fragrance – again, a real fragrance, not an artificial one – and it gets most dishes clean, but if there is anything crusted onto a fork, or a residue in the bottom of a cup, it is still there when the wash cycle is done. However, part of that may be due to the age of my dishwasher, so I am not completely dissatisfied; I just need to rinse and prewash thoroughly before putting dishes into the dishwasher. The other dish soap, for use with a sinkful of dirty dishes, is lavender scented (it too comes unscented), works as well as or better than others I’ve used, including Ivory, Joy, and Ajax. It is, like the laundry liquid soap, slightly more expensive than the other similar products, but not so much that it is out of my price range.
The paper products were my biggest disappointment. While the large black garbage bags were actually less expensive than my grocery store’s store brand, they are much thinner and rip very easily. This may be because they are biodegradable, but the result is that if I use them, I have to use more than the store brands, because I can’t put as much in them. The feminine products were also disappointing. (Males may now skip to the next paragraph. Thank you.) The tampons have no applicator, and are difficult both to insert and to remove. They are not especially absorbent, either. They don’t have anything in them that can cause vaginal irritation, but they just aren’t comfortable. The thin panty-liners were huge, and had wings. I’ve never really liked wings on liners; I understand their supposed purpose, but they never seem to work they way they are supposed to. The Seventh Generation product is very thick for a “thin” liner, and the adhesive on the back and the wings doesn’t stick well at all. The material of the liner tends to wad up, uncomfortably, in the center of the pad.
That said, using these products is doing the environment a favor. The back of the dish soap bottle says: “YOU ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCEtm. If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 25 oz. petroleum based dish washing liquid with our 25 oz. vegetable based product, we could save 81,000 barrels of oil, enough to heat and cool 4,600 U.S. homes for a year!” [emphasis theirs, not mine]. Using their products saves natural resources such as forests, since all their paper is recycled and all their contents are renewable; they reduce pollution, because the run-off from their products is not harmful to the environment, as are bleaches, chlorine, phosphates, and other cleanser ingredients (really, how safe can an oven cleaner be if you are told to wear a face mask and open windows when you use it?); and they prevent toxic chemicals found in other brands of similar products from reaching waterways, oceans, air, and soil. If everyone did use the product, it could make an enormous difference. But I am still debating whether the benefit to the environment is worth the stains on my clothing and the twice washing of dishes. The feminine products won’t be a concern for me for much longer, God willing, but I absolutely won’t use them again.
The prices are a little high, and they don’t clean quite as well; the plastic bags rip too easily and the feminine products are uncomfortable. But they leave a pleasant scent, soften my clothes, and the liquid dish soap that isn’t for the automatic dishwasher works very well in the sink. I’d rate the Seventh Generation products I tried at a 4 stars out of 5; it would be no better than a 3, if it weren’t for their concern for the environment, and for humanity and the world not just now, but down to the seventh generation from now.
