I gave up paper towels when I first went plastic-free since all brands come wrapped in plastic. Later, I realized how wasteful the whole idea of paper towels is in the first place. So I switched to natural cellulose sponges and cut-up rags. (Microfiber cloths are a no-no for the plastic-free crowd because they’re made […]
Nowadays, I stick to buying clothes that can be washed at home rather than dry cleaned. Dry cleaning is expensive and environmentally harmful. But I do still have several items of clothing, as well as some wool blankets, that cannot be machine laundered at home, and for those I need a good outside cleaner. In […]
June 13, 2008 Citra Solv, LLC PO Box 2597 Danbury, CT 06813-2597 Dear Steve & Melissa, I purchased a box of CitraSuds natural laundry detergent today at the Ecology Center in Berkeley, CA. I am always on the lookout for environmentally safe products and was happy to learn that your laundry powder is biodegradable and […]
I was planning to write about DIY hair care products this week. But so far, my experiments have been less than successful. Take, for example, the sugar water hairspray, exhibit left. Here’s the recipe: Dissolve 1 tablespoon sugar in a cup of water. Boil 3 minutes. Be sure the sugar is completely dissolved. Add 1 […]
After all my hoopla about using hydrogen peroxide to clean the inside of tomato sauce jar lids, I’m now having second thoughts. Sorry to get prematurely excited. A few days ago, after “bleaching” the tomato stains out of a couple of lids with hydrogen peroxide, I noticed that the smell was not completely gone. So […]
8/28/07 Update: It turns out that cleaning pasta sauce jar lids with hydrogen peroxide is not such a good idea. H202 eats through the coating inside the jar lid. Read more here. Pasta sauce jars would be a great replacement for plastic food storage containers, if it weren’t for the tomato stain and smell that […]