7gen Bloc

An article in Chemical and Engineering News last week alerts us to the arrival of a new word. The word is "leachables," and it refers to any chemical that can leach out of a container or packaging and into whatever it's holding.

In the early part of my pregnancy, a bird made her nest on the upper frame of our nursery's window. Our home's orientation allowed me to watch the whole process, from supply missions to incubation to the much-anticipated hatching. The mother bird noticed my interest and we locked eyes on numerous occasions as she tended to her four newborns. I could tell she was in a fragile state.

Your air, that is. Visit your local retailer for great deals on Seventh Generation products starting this week. As winter approaches, we open our windows less, trapping polluted air inside our homes. The easiest way to keep your home healthy is to use all-natural cleaning products that won’t leave behind harmful chemical residue or pollute indoor air. Here are 9 more ways to clear the air this fall.

Seventh Generation is thrilled to introduce a new dish liquid that works harder for you and the environment! Our new formula cleans 50% more dishes than our current dish liquid, and comes in a new 25oz bottle made from 90% post-consumer recycled plastic. In addition to cleaning more dishes, our new formula reduces our reliance on non-renewable resources by 50%. Our new Environmental Savings Statement looks like this:

As we have mentioned in previous blog posts, Seventh Generation has launched a major initiative around palm oil. As you know, the massive expanse in palm oil production has caused vast tracts of tropical rainforest to be slashed and burned to make way for massive new palm oil plantations.

I just came across this June 2008 TED film on Chris Jordons' work on picturing excess. Chris comments on his website: "The pervasiveness of our consumerism holds a seductive kind of mob mentality. Collectively we are committing a vast and unsustainable act of taking, but we each are anonymous and no one is in charge or accountable for the consequences. I fear that in this process we are doing irreparable harm to our planet and to our individual spirits." This is a powerful film.

I think it is safe to say that most pregnant women obsess about food. I know I did during my first two pregnancies, and now, as I head down the road to mommyhood for the third time, I can report that some things never change.

Leave it to kids' TV to further my green education. It was while watching Olivia, based on the witty books by Ian Falconer, that I learned about bento boxes. This nifty green lunchbox alternative crossed my radar just in time for back-to-school season.

There are a lot of places you might think to look for a cure for cancer, but chances are tick spit isn't one of them. Yet that's where a hunch took Brazilian researchers recently. And what they found may just may be medicine's holy grail.

In a world where we talk about everything all the time, many important things still go unsaid. As a man who knows he has more than a 50% chance of getting some type of cancer at some point in his lifetime -- with testicular and prostate cancer topping the list -- I can tell you that men don't talk about things like that in public.