Buying Green Products Responsibly

I'm sure that at some point in your life you've heard of businesses who are caught using child labor or exploiting works. Kathy Lee Gifford comes to my mind and I found this article that talks about worker exploitation in New York City. So how can you avoid buying products that have been greenwashed into looking like sustainable, responsibly made products when they're really being made from trees from the rain forest by children in China, Japan, Vietnam, or some other far away country that has a record of using child labor.

A website that I happened to stumble upon called Rate It Green can help. It's an online community of people who are concerned with purchasing their products from green retailers who are really green. Although it seems like it's used more for people who are contractors, you still might find something helpful.

Green People is a website that is dedicated to bring you the resources you need to bring your shopping to the next level. They have links for everything from baby products to eco tourism. All of their lists of suppliers are available to view by location or as a complete listing depending on what you're looking for. This site looks like a great resource for finding what you need.

I also found a website called Green Seal that will only give it's seal of greenness to companies whose products have passed their stringent testing and comparison to other products in its class. They also provide resources to find the products that they have given their seal to. Their list isn't very long but it is another good place to start looking to find the products that you might need.

Keep your eyes open and please feel free to let me know if you find any other websites that do the same! I would love to keep adding websites to this list.

Can Smoking Be Eco-Friendly?

Since I have decided to look, or at least do my best to look, at every aspect of life and try to make it a little greener, I thought I might take a look at cigarettes and see if there were any that tried to say that they were 'green' or at least earth friendly.

Well, so far no luck on that 'green' cigarette but I did find an interesting article on cigarette filters that dissolve in rainwater. Makes you think about the possibilities huh? Unfortunately, I'm sure that big tobacco will claim that it would cost waaaay too much money to make these filters and that keeping their production methods just the same as they are now would be much more Earth friendly.

You can read here about how big tobacco is claiming the their production methods and products are Earth friendly. Although I feel obligated to tell you that I got the article from a blog. I will do my best to find an article from a newspaper or something so that this guy's claims can be backed up a little.

I also discovered a new term, seeing as how I'm pretty new at this whole green thing, called greenwashing. It's when people claim that a product is organically grown or is sustainable to make more money. I found this article that gives ten tips on how to avoid purchasing greenwashed products and it even has a link in it to a greenwash guide that looks like it could be a good read.