True Confessions of an Eco-Entrepreneur - Green Cleaning Products - Four Winds Healthy Home Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning

True Confessions of an Eco-Entrepreneur - Green Search Engines with Meaningful Benefits - Four Winds Healthy Home Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning

Sun, 11 May 2008 10:44:56 -0500

Green Search Engines - There are many green seach engines. The Green Maven, is one of my favorites. However, the portals listed below are proactive by bestowing the proceeds from their sites to global ecological causes. These green search engines allocate site proceeds to reforestation, land conservation and offsetting greenhouse gas emissions. So all you have to do is search for free on any of these sites and know that you are doing something positive and long lasting for the planetary cause at the same time.

Ecocho.com - a green search engine wrapper from Austraila that presently uses Yahoo search. You have the option of a black wrapper as well. For every 1000 searches, Ecocho.com will plant 2 trees.

Climategift.com - a green search engine and portal for green content, as opposed to general content. You choose the organization you would like to support before you search. The three distinguished organizations they align with are: World Resources Institute, Reef Check, and Earth Island Institute. You can always go back and forth between searches if you would like to support all of them.

Friendsgreen.com - a green search engine wrapper that uses Yahoo search. Proceeds from searches are pledged to reforestation in the rainforest to fight global warming. This site has a site-track and the last number I saw was 3,882,253 square feet of the rain forest saved by Friendsgreen.com

Ecoogler.com - an ecological search engine that uses Yahoo search. Ecoogler.com reharvests trees in the Amazon region under the umbrella of Aquaverde, a long standing non-profit agency from Geneva, Switzerland. For every 10,000 searches they plant 1 tree.

greenlinking.com - another Austrailian green search engine with a twist. You have a choice using Google search alone, or you can combine the rhythms of MSN, Yahoo and Google together on a search. This site purchases carbon credits from Carbon Planet to offset greenhouse gasses.

Searchgreener.com - green search engine wrapper with a black screen using Google search. This site is similar to Blackle, EcoFind and Earthle in the sense that they all have black wrappers with a view to saving energy. Th meaningful difference is that Searchgreener donates all profits to purchase carbon offsets.

greenterrior.org - a green search engine using Google search. greenterrior is currently allocating 100% of the site's profits to the current goal of offseting 70 tons of carbon by 6/1/2008. On the site they have a graph as to their progress. New goals are always being formatted with a view to land conservation and carbon offsetts from greenouse gas emissions. This is a remarkable site wtih steady goals and a thoughtful name.

True Confessions of an Eco-Entrepreneur - The High Margin of Deceit - Four Winds Healthy Home Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning

Fri, 09 May 2008 13:12:48 -0500

The Green Shame. A study by Terra Choice, conducted in 2007, was featured on the GreenBiz.com website made the following claim - .05% or 1 in 1753 green marketing claims were true, the rest were found to be false or misleading.

What does this mean for the well intentioned consumer, the companies that are involved in this high margin of deceit, and the companies who are telling the truth? In a nutshell, since that study was published, more watchdog agencies, conventional and eco-repsonsible, have been keeping their eyes open and their attorneys busy in 2008. Not bad for just the fifth month of the year.

Volkswagon, Toyota, British Petroleum among others have received backlash financially and otherwise from various international news agencies, such as The Wall Street Journal and The British Financial Times, for misleading and overstated green claims.

Recently many small and medium sized eco-friendly companies producing body care and cleaning products have been scandalized by the study conducted by Organic Consumers Association. Various cancer causing agents that have no place in conventional products were found in many so called green products. Some companies claim that it was unintentional and was a by-product of a contaminated detergent softening process. To make matters worse, many of these carcinogenic agents were also not disclosed on the Material Safety Data Sheets issued by the offending companies.

The moral and the hope of the story is read the ingredients, always. If you can not pronounce them, or if they end in -oxide, -iazide - iane - ulfate - exene - you know it is most likely a chemical based product, not a truly plant based quality product. Another indicator is examine how eco-resposnible, green prinicples flow through the firm's entire business identity. If there is just a green word or mention here, or a green SEO tag there, or only a pretty picture of nature, chances are, they are jumping on the green band wagon for profit only.

http://www.greenBiz.com http://www.organicconsumers.org

True Confessions of an Eco-Entrepreneur - Green Cleaning Products - Four Winds Healthy Home Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 18:27:36 -0500

Lately it seems like green is the new gray because it all blurs back into the same nondescript haze of sales pitches and half-truths. In my business, it appears to be looking that way more and more. I went into a local branch of a national distributor of professional grade cleaning supplies to purchase some hoses and a new drapery wand. Whenever I am there, even though I do not purchase any cleaning solutions, I always look at the new offerings from the giants of the industry. While perusing the newer items, I was greeted with "Now you can buy your green cleaning supplies here!"

The convenience and ease of purchasing did cross my mind. So I took a close look at the ingredients on the various labels and asked for the Material Safety Data Sheets. All the usual suspects were produced. Petrochemicals were present, as were sodium octanesulfonate, various forms of glycol ether, to name just a few of the less offensive chemicals. These so called green carpet cleaning products were just as toxic as when I first looked at the regular cleaning compounds by these same companies, 8 years ago. These were just packaged differently - greener, fresher, I guess. In all fairness, some of the chemical rations were at a lower percentage than before. But still quite troublesome, if you are calling them green.

Air duct sanitizers were more of the same, and also never going to pass an allergy MD who does test the products we use before he refers his patients to us. Let's not even move on to these carpet cleaning products - spotters, boosters, de-foaming agents, de-browning agents, protectors... Long story short, no viable changes in the industry on a corporate level. Even Clorox Green Works, while certainly a baby step in the right direction; these products still contain an unnecessary chemical content for a company that has the means and the experience to produce an exquisite green product if they chose to. If you look at their MSDS, the chemicals listed in the section for hazardous content shouldn't even be there. These same chemicals are not present in the formulas of truly effective plant based cleaning compounds, produced by smaller independent companies. Those compounded quality products no not need that chemical boost to perform as well. The ratio of plant based ingredients to the entire sum of the product is key. It appears we still, as a nation have a chemical romance that is not soon breaking up.

Geen, Eco-friendly, Earth Friendly, non-toxic, they are just buzzwords if you take them at face value. One must really read the small print on the label and ask for the Material Safety Data Sheets. Ask your carpet, air duct and tile cleaners for these if you have any questions or concerns about what is being sprayed into your living environments. Whether the carpet or air duct cleaning company says it is green or not, it is required by law in most states to carry those MSDS sheets in the van. Especially, if they are using chemical based cleaning products. Michelle Viggiano, Four Winds Healthy Home Carpet and Air Duct Cleaning, http://www.healthyhomeaz.com/