Eco-friendly Product companies?

Hi all!

I was wondering about eco-friendly products and how "eco-friendly" they are. What exactly makes them "eco-friendly"? Is it the substances they use, the promos they have or the ideals they allegedly stand for?
Currently, the top 10 Environmentally Friendly Home cleaning Product Companies are:

1. Seventh Generation
2. Greener Choice OxiBrite
3. Ecover
4. Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day
5. J. R. Watkins
6. Nature Clean
7. Method
8. Simple Green Naturals
9. Shaklee
10. ECOS – Earth Friendly Products


Lemme know what you guys think.

 

I went and looked at only the first one on your list..

Small heavy plastic containers, and plastic wrap do not make for an eco-friendly company, no matter how much the company may claim so...

So, my question to you would be, just what do you use as a criteria for this list?

 

You have a valid point in the plastics, but I guess we can still find some other way to use them through recycling and reusing.

I was pondering on how they are able to live up to their rep as "green" companies. I wanted to find out about valid criteria as well.

But then again, I guess we can all go a long way with vinegar and baking soda.

 

If these companies wanted to be an example of 'green' thinking, they would open (or encourage others to open) distribution stores in the large residential buildings every couple of blocks, where they had bulk tanks or bins of their products, and the customers would bring in their re-useable containers and fill them at a huge discount.

Reduce packaging, shipping, transportation on the customer end, waste, land fill clutter AND create jobs.

One of the problems with this idea though is that the 'consumer' is all caught up in the hype of which company and product is best, so it would be difficult to do with 9 million brands of laundry soap, not to mention all the other products that this would work with.

If they just wanted to be a little bit more green then they are now, they could stop adding water to their products. Even the 'concentrated' brands are not full strength, they are 'bulked up' with water.

To me, about the only thing worse (in terms of companies being green or not) then a company that doesn't care, are the ones that pretend to.

 

I would put Dr. Bronners at the top of the list. Ecofriendly and ethical.

 

I guess one factor that affects a company's status being "green" is the way their customers handle their products and services- which is ultimately influenced by the way the company handles its customer, the policies that lie within it, the PR.

I mean, everyone should have a part right?

 

Everyone does have a part. The companies are only responding to one thing, the bottom line. That is 100% affected by who chooses to use them.

The heart of consumerism is the consumer, without them, these companies wouldn't exist.

The best part is that these same consumers are the ones who demand new shoes ever 3 months to appease the fashion guard, or those that buy a new car every year to show up their neighbors, or those that buy bottled water and so on.

That has nothing to do with my post about companies branding themselves as green though, it was about the way companies portray themselves...