The cost of shopping green

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I went to the grocery store this weekend to get food, supplies, etc.

I figured it was my turn to buy dish soap, so I grabbed some. I’m on a bit of a budget, and even if I wasn’t, I always check the cost/volume ratio on most things I buy to try to minimize my costs in the long run.

I’m a pretty environmentally and local-economy conscious guy, so I always try to buy local, buy organic, and buy enviro-friendly products.

But, I’m looking at all the dish soap, and the eco-product is almost three dollars more expensive than the typical “Joy” or “Dawn” or whichever it was. More than twice as expensive.

But, on further inspection, the store brand had a fully biodegradable, no artificial etc etc etc product for only about 20 cents more than the ‘normal’ detergent. So, I bought that, feeling good about myself, and my thriftiness!
I related this story to my roommate, who scolded me when I told him I was about to buy the non-environmentally-friendly detergent.

“But it was the difference between $1.59 and $4.50! [or something like that]”

“tsk! How much money is that over the course of the year? Not much!”

Well, I let it drop. But really. I refuse to feel obligated to spend what seems clearly a ridiculous sum on soap just because it’s “good for the environment.” Heck, the grocery store seems to be able to produce a similar product for less than half.

I’m all for making sustainable choices. But I won’t be guilted into making someone else rich because I care about the environment. Screw that.

2

That’s nothing, spread it out over the course of 10 years and it’s even less!!!

3

Just let the dog lick the dishes clean and you can save on both dish soap and dog food, plus help the environment. Win-win-win!

4

In addition to the expense, I find those products just don’t get the job done. I recently finished up a bottle of Seventh Generation dishwasher soap and will never buy that crap again–I had to constantly rewash dishes because they weren’t clean.

5

This is an important point - some organic/“environmental” products are great, some suck. I checked a Consumer Reports review of different cleaners that, for instance, really liked the Green Works tub-n-tile cleaner (except it wasn’t ideal on mildew), but hated the Seventh Generation glass cleaner, saying that it wasn’t much more effective than plain water.

Tell your roommate you’d rather not waste water by rewashing with a less-effective product (note: it may well work just fine, I don’t know) and watch his head explode. :slight_smile:

6

Too late for the edit: My husband does the dishes at our house, and likes the Kirkland (Costco’s house brand) “environmentally friendly” dishwashing liquid. It’s a pretty good cost per unit volume, and we keep a small bottle on the sink and refill it (using a funnel) from the big jug that Costco sells. It’s not available through their website, just in their warehouse membership stores, but I found a description of their products online.

7

At present anyway, “organic” products are really just feel-goody crap for the well-to-do. It’s laughable to think the billions and billions of the planet’s poor could pay those prices even if they wanted to.

8

Tell your roommate that he can pay the premium then and you will buy whatever fookin dish soap his conscience demands.

9

I thought for a moment about getting seventh generation laundry detergent once. It was the moment just before I noticed it was over $10 for the amount I get for $4.

10

Heh. Actually, this is a roommate who has criticized me for leaving some water running while shaving. “But,” says I, “I don’t use any shaving cream at all, so think of all that goes into the manufacture and transport of a can of shaving cream to my house, and maybe all-in-all I’m doing better for the environment than a person who turns the water off but uses shaving cream. Or, what if I took an extra few minutes in the shower to shave instead?”

He’s dropped that complaint, though I know it bugs him when I do it.

(we’re best friends, which is why this is not a serious issue; a random roommate who pulled this on me would get on my nerves pretty instantaneously)

11

You know what new product I saw recently that cracked me up? Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil, “100% Recycled!” version.

Aluminum is easily the most recyclable (and thus the most recycled) material on the planet. It’s far cheaper to recycle aluminum than to pull new stuff out of the ground. So, I’m betting that the original Reynolds Wrap was probably about 90% recycled to begin with, if not more. But now, hooray! I can pay more for essentially the same thing, in a green box!

And here’s the funny thing: I just saw on their website that it’s made from “a mix of pre- and post-consumer aluminum.” Is it just me, or does “pre-consumer” mean “not actually recycled”? Isn’t that why paper companies started having to put the post-consumer percentage on their product (they were scraping up the waste from paper mill floors and such and running it through to make new paper, an economical process that they were doing anyway, and calling it “recycling” to boost their percentages)? Seriously, who they foolin’?

I haven’t comparison shopped yet, so I don’t know how much more “100% Recycled” foil costs compared to their old product. Not much, I’m sure, but a gouge is a gouge.

12

The thing that really bugs me is, as the OP pointed out, these “Green” labels are really only meant to 1) Fleece the ignorant or 2) Appeal to eco-snobs. 7 times out of 10 (number derived rectally), I can find a perfectly “eco-friendly” alternative that simply isn’t labeled as such, and is cheaper. But you have to know your stuff to do that. You have to know what stuff is, and be able in some measure, to decipher chemical codewords.

Related rant: “dehydrated cane juice”. Fuck you. It’s fucking sugar, assholes.

(BTW, most of Seventh Generation’s stuff sucks, but their Green Mandarin and Leaf (WTF?) Shower Cleaner is really good. It’s become my all-purpose cleaner. It cleans almost as well as Clorox Clean-Up without bleaching my cleaning shirts, and it rinses much easier than Formula 409 or Fantastik. I still keep the Clorox Clean-Up around for Kool-Aid stains on the countertop, though.)

13

I like the 7th gen laundry detergent, but use it sparingly in combination with Borax and Washing Soda. The eco-Kirkland stuff is too thick. But the eco-Kirkland dish detergent rocks.

My girlfriends and I (kept typing girlfiends) did a eco-product swap. But I tend to make my own of a lot of things.

14

It’s interesting that you mentioned Seventh Generation. I bought their laundry detergent and used it on a load of clothing. I wound up itching throughout my torso. After using it a second week in a row I realized maybe it was the detergent. It was the only thing I changed. Same bathsoap, no new foods, lotions, fabrics, etc. No pets, no bugs, etc. I itched and itched incredibly and wound up with almost bloody welts that took quite a while to heal. :eek: Emailed Seventh Generation to tell them my story and while they denied any other complaints and were willing to reimburse me, they DID want to know the batch number on the packaging, “just in case…” Yeah, right.

Leads me to believe they had other complaints or a problem in production but not bad enough for a recall… Oh yeah, they also wanted to know what product I had previously used and please, I shouldn’t judge them by this one mishap. Oh sure, like I’m EVER going to trust them and go through that problem again. It took weeks for my skin to return to normal, which it started doing after I switched back to my usual–Tide unscented, in case anyone wants to know.

15

Unless you live somewhere really rustic, water from the sink and drain goes to a waste treatment plant. It does not spill straight down a storm drain into your nearest salmon-spawning stream where the spotted owls splash in the waves.

Dawn vs. Hippie Hugsasudsalot ™ makes no difference, use whatever gets your dishes clean.

16

Oo yeah, I love that stuff. It’s so-so when I’m fighting huge soap scum problems, but Whole Foods’* 365 “house brand” soap scum spray is excellent. And I love Ecover’s fabric softener. I make my own laundry detergent.

  • Yes, yes - aka “Whole Paycheck”. Go to their supplements section and find the bulk sale herbs/spices. You can fill a spice jar for a quarter to a dollar, typically.
17

O. M. G. That’s freakin’ awesome! I’m so making laundry detergent this weekend! Ever try scenting it with essential oils?

18

Well, I fell for it. I remembered how Cecil said aluminum is the most recycled (20-something %) and wanted to help create a market for it. I guess I was duped.

However, somehow the 50-ft and 100-ft rolls were both the same price (with the 100-ft one in a more obscure spot in the display :mad:) so at least I got the cheaper option.

19

Things like those are for the most part “feel good” things people do.

For instance, I worked at a hotel and they started the “GREEN” business about, if you want your sheets changed put this card here. We’re trying to go green and help the environment. So by not changing your sheets you save the costs of laundering…"

Then they go into a list of how you save the world. Now this applies to stay over only. When people checked out they always changed the sheets.

Now this might have some validity but in reality it was meaningless. If the company said, We will make 1 million dollars and we saved $5,000 by not washing sheets and dontate that money to a cause, that may help. But all they do is use the saved $5,000 to increase salaries and bonuses etc. So the people get extra money and buy cars and stuff that aren’t green that wind up hurting the world even more than the trivial amount not washing the sheets does.

If you really want to effect a change then you should get a second job and donate all the money you earn to a reputable cause that you’ve researched and are sure actually helps and doesn’t go for admin costs.

You earning power is always many times greater than your savings power.

You have to remember once something is bad, it’s bad. If you have 10,000 units of pollution and 5,000 of it will give you cancer but 9,000 of those units are produced by a company. Even if every consumer stopped polluting the cancer would still be there.

'Cause you aren’t tackling the real problem. You’re just going with a “feel good” solution.

In the OP case you’d probably be far better off, if you want to help people, buying the regular detergent and giving the spare change to a homeless person or saving it and giving it to a reputable charity. It won’t help the environment, but someone will actually get some good out of it.

20

I tend to think about dish soap in terms of the Exxon Valdez. When they were cleaning the oil spilled creatures, they used Dawn. Now, back in the day, we weren’t as environmentally conscious as we are now, but they used it to HELP the environment.

Dawn it is, and Dawn is as it shall be.