For My Kids Eco Products Review

For My Kids is a company that produces cleaning and care products that are safe for your children (and for you) to use. Started by new mum/mom Christine Stewart when she was made aware of the dangers of using conventional/popual household cleaner and hand wash.

I was sent “All-Natural Alternative to Antibacterial Disinfectants”, “All-Natural Hand Wash”, “All-Natural Lip Balm”, and “All-Natural Comfrey Salve”, and for my full review, see Green Guys Global. Suffice to say the products were great, contain natural and organic ingredients and are certainly a refreshing change from the hazardous chemicals that a lot of popular products contain. They range from $4.59 so are pretty inexpensive, so take a look at my full review and For My Kids .

For some other eco-friendly alternatives to household cleaners, see our eco reviews page, that has a cleaning section.

Quick Tip Of The Day - Is Your Fridge / Freezer Running Well?

A reader (thanks Mathew! That’s not him pictured by the way.) sent us this little story a while back that I thought might be of interest to you all:

“Today my fridge/freezer packed up. Well, actually it is my landlord’s, so I did not get the back off of it straight away. I called the support line and they said that they could get the engineer out for £100. I told my landlord and he said he would handle it. I knew what this meant - a long time with warm beer! I decided to get the back off and see what was wrong. There was a huge ‘cat size’ quantity of fluff blocking the vent that had accrued over seven years or so. I removed this et voila! Fridge/freezer sprang back into life. Within minutes everything was tickety-boo. The only downside was that the compressor was no longer muffled as much as it used to be, hence more noise in the kitchen.

Lesson learned? Pull the fridge/freezer out and remove whatever fluff there is. The machine works more efficiently thereafter, therefore saving electricity. I advise you and all of your readers to do likewise, who knows it could be warm beer for you too if you don’t take the same precautions.”

And no-one likes warm beer do they? Another couple of tips he suggested were getting rid of any ice build-ups (sounds like a job for a quiet Sunday afternoon), and also checking the seal around the door is working properly. You shouldn’t be able to slid a piece of paper between the seal and the fridge or freezer.

Autonomie Flip Flops Eco Product Review

Flip Flops (or Slip Slops as I sometimes like to call them for some reason) have become a must have item for now now I live in Southern California. Autonomie Project were kind enough to send me a pair of their Ethletic flip flops for review. If you can’t see the video below, simply go here.

The flip flops 100% all natural FSC-certified rubber. The FSC-certification guarantees that the rubber was tapped from a sustainable forest in which the trees are taken care of in balance with their natural surroundings without any major clear cutting. In addition, the FSC ensures that no indigenous wildlife or people were displaced during the production of our rubber. This rubber is the only kind like it in the entire world. (Most other rubbers are man-made in a chemical factory).

Autonomie Project is a new Fair Trade fashion company offering stylish sweatshop-free & eco-friendly footwear, clothing and accessories. They also have have an interesting blog that is worth a look, with a great guide to behind the scenes of the flips flops. They’re really comfortable, not like some of the cheap foam ones you can get and they, er, flipped and flopped as required.

The facility that manufactures these flip flops and the rest of their footwear is Fair Trade certified by FLO (the Fair Trade Labeling Organization, an international auditing entity). 25% of the cost goes directly into a workers welfare fund that is distributed to the workers as a Fair Trade premium on top of their regular wages and is also used towards community projects. In 2006, proceeds from their sales went to building a community health clinic and towards offsetting health insurance for all of their workers. In 2007, the fund went towards bringing better water access to the villagers by building water pipes from the nearest well (which is a few miles away) to taps in front of each villagers house.

Autonomie Project also sell some great shoes that I’ll be reviewing soon, and also sell bags and purses, so why not take a look?

Is MoreEco Another Great Way To Get Free Green Stuff?

After doing a review of Green Rewards, I was told of another website called www.moreeco.com which also aims to reward people doing green shopping by giving them points to amass and then buy more green stuff with.

One way it differs from Green Rewards is that it gives you points for shopping at green stores only, rather than all, or a lot, of your online shopping. Also the rewards include some good stuff like planting a tree with your points.

I’ll investigate further and let you know how I find it. Also if you’re not reading enough at the moment, there’s a pretty cool blog with some interesting stuff on there. Called BeMoreEco, it contains some fun bits and pieces.

Carnival of the Green #142!

So the Carnival of the Green comes to Life Goggles. Thanks to Enviroblog for hosting last week and you can get next week’s fix at Savvy Vegetarian.

Welcome to both new and regular readers, if you are new to Life Goggles then to sum us up, we basically do what it says along the top: green reviews, news and interviews. If you like what you see, sign up for our free weekly newsletter and/or our RSS feed over there on the right.

Self-promotion over, let’s have a look at the submissions this week. First up is Lovelyn over at The Art of Balanced Living who encourages us to recycle our new compact fluorescent bulbs but makes a good point that it’s quite hard to do in the UK and suggests we should just go to bed when the sun sets. Although that might be a little tough in the winter when it sets at 4pm.

A great thing about doing this carnival is that I’ve rediscovered how huge a subject area being green is. I’d never even thought about whether making voice calls over the internet is greener than traditional telephony. But Jimmy at VoIP Now has done and written a great piece about it. It’s a complex subject which gives you food for thought.

Admirable India has lots of photos and a video of the Lalbagh Botanical Garden in Bangalore.

If you’re a fan of jam and of strawberries, then Eco Joe has a sugary treat for you over at his blog. The recipe and photos means making your own strawberry jam is easy - just remember to use a very big pan.

Beth from Fake Plastic Fish has found something to help her with her no new plastic and “no ‘poo” rules when washing her hair. Called Product, it’s made from only five natural ingredients, sold in a glass jar, and makes her hair nice and shiny.

David from The Good Human has written a piece comparing a 1987 Honda Civic’s gas mileage to the current model. He explains why gas mileage is worse now and asks us and the the car manufacturers to do better.

The startling fact that UK households throw away 1.3 million unopened yoghurt cartons every day is behind Oliver Moore’s piece on food waste. But it’s not all about the householder. The article explains who is really to blame for all the wasted food.

The next submission comes from Sally at Veggie Revolution. Guest writer Juliane Sloane has written an article on the Olympic Games saying while Beijing is famous for its smog, the Olympic Village itself is actually green.

The Digerati Life has an informative article for those of you who live in areas susceptible to wild fire and for everyone in general to take heed. 15 fire safety tips to protect your life and home includes tips such as checking your smoke alarm regularly and keeping brush away from you house.

Elizabeth from Go Green Travel Green has written a review of the book In Defense of Food. She candidly sums the book up and gives a lot of advice.

Benjamin Dinsmore from Trees Full of Money has summed up his tips to reduce energy at home in a handy post called 36 Ways to Reduce Your Home’s Energy Use. Some may seem pretty obvious but are often overlooked so check it out.

And that’s it, thanks for all the submissions, we enjoyed looking at them all. If you want to host the Carnival of the Green on your site, take a look at TreeHugger for details here.

UPDATE: A bit of a late submission but Mrs Green has an article that’s close to my heart about decluttering books.

ACME Climate Action Video - Helping You Be Green

While I was working on the review of a lovely book sent to me called ACME Climate Action, in an email the publishers (HarperCollins if you’re interested) also included this video which features the book and has a bit of information on why the book exists. I almost didn’t bother with the rest of the review as this does the job quite nicely and saves me doing a video of it. It’s quite a remarkable book and the video is cool too. It certainly makes a change from traditional environmentalism.

Green People Organic Homme Shave Now Shaving Gel Eco Product Review

Being one of those no shaving people (see my picture), when Male Organics give me shaving products to test, I rope in Jez to give them a go. He was last seen enjoying the Trevarno shaving soap and when the (deep breath) Green People Organic Homme Shave Now shaving gel landed on my doorstep, I gave Jez a call. He loves free stuff does Jez, so off he went and reported back a few weeks later:

“OK, so it says it’s a gel but it’s really more like a cream. As with all gels, it’s a bit messy to apply, seems to get all over your hands and razor and, despite claims to the contrary, it really doesn’t lather up well – if at all. Unlike traditional shaving bowls and soap, you don’t get the feeling that it’s really sinking into the hair or getting in deep enough for a good shave but it’s really not bad at all.

“I deliberately didn’t shave for five days (and I get quite a beard in that time) to really test it out and it was a good, smooth shave with only one little nick which was probably more due to my lack of care than the razor or gel. I wouldn’t say it left me feeling particularly refreshed but then again, I wasn’t rushing to splash freezing cold water on my face.

“Due to the lack of lather, you’ll probably end up using more of this gel than you really need just to feel like you’ve got enough on but all in all, its not a bad shave and it’s enviro credentials are good so give it a try.”

Free from SLS/SLES, artificial fragrances, parabens, ethyl alcohol and unnecessary synthetic ingredients, Green People’s shave gel is full of organic ingredients - well 90% anyway, it’s a bit tricky to get them all certified so they say.

A 125ml tub costs £8.99 from Male Organics.

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