Apr 20 2009
Environmentally Preferable? What Does that Mean?
Photo credit: Consumer Reports
And so it begins…the mass production of “environmentally safe” products! But are they really environmentally safe? I read an article today by Greener Design on the Environmental Protection Agency possibly loosening restrictions and allowing some manufacturers to market disinfectants as “environmentally preferable.”
Please forgive my skepticism but what exactly does “environmentally preferable” actually mean? Does this mean that on a scale of 1-10 these products aren’t as harmful as the others? It would be very easy for a consumer that is uneducated in the ways of the environment to be easily persuaded into purchasing a product that they believe is safe for the environment because the product has some misleading label. When the reality is that the consumer has purchased a product that just isn’t “as bad” for the environment as all the others!
The only way to protect our consumer rights is to educate ourselves with the products that we use and limit the products that we buy. Practice creating your own natural products at home. Items such as cleaners, clothes, growing our own vegetables and other food products such as eggs, herbs or cheese can be made or grown at home much safer and cheaper than the products that we buy at the store. When you must by products at the store, do a little research to make sure of what you are buying, it’s important.
~Wind
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The EPA is “loosening restrictions”? Don’t they need to come up with hard-set restrictions before they can be loosened? There are already so many products out there that tout claims like “natural” or “environmentally friendly” when they are just rife with chemicals. Can the EPA first do something about those terms and then move into the more ambiguous “environmentally preferable”?
Hi Melanie! You would think so…The terms that they use are so loose that they could mean just about anything. “Environmentally preferable” to me, is just silly…
Hi Wind!
Can you give some tips about buying green? There are just some things that we really need to buy (i’m talking about stuff like shampoo, toothpaste, soap, etc) and cannot produce on our own.
I’ve read a news article about some facial scrub products containing micro beads that are actually made of plastic, and that they’re slowly accumulating in the ocean (and I’ve been using them for years now!).
What are some of the things that you look for when you buy these types of products (aside from the word organic/natural and aside from researching their content) to know whether they’re environmentally safe or not?
Any tip would be appreciated. Thanks!