Ever wondered what's in a bottle of Zout Enzymatic Stain Remover? It is made of, and I quote the label, "Cleaning agents and enzymes." Cleaning agents! You don't say? Wow, thanks for clearing that up, because I thought your stain remover was made from baked beans and kitten whiskers.
As part of my quest to go entirely sulfate-free due to allergies, I have spent a lot of time poring over the labels of random products in the grocery store aisles. I have found some real surprises!
For example, did you know that the government does not require cleaning products to list their ingredients? Any cleaning product which lists its ingredients is doing so on a strictly voluntary basis. This is why, if you turn around a lot of laundry detergent bottles, you will find a lot of vague weasel language.
To my dismay, a lot of "green" cleaners use this same vague language. For example, the label on Seventh Generation products is going to explain that it's made of "plant-based surfactants," which means nothing. SLS, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, is one of the things that many eco-hippies (like myself) and concerned parents are trying to avoid. SLS is a chemical derived from coconut oil, so "plant based surfactants" can, and probably does, mean SLS.
Basically, you have to pick your battles, and you're at their mercy.
If you ask me, it's a mistake to buy any supposedly eco-friendly product which comes in a plastic bottle. If you're lucky, plastic never degrades. If you're not lucky, it breaks down into little fragments that get blown out to sea and fill up the North Pacific Gyre and get consumed by albatross chicks. Furthermore, as if it needs repeating, plastic is a petroleum product. How eco-friendly can something be if it's contained inside a petroleum product?
All of those plastic containers are single-use, too. Such a waste!
Of course, an argument could be made that if you have to read the label, you're buying the wrong thing. This goes for food, too. If you have to turn a food container around and read the ingredients to find out what's in it, you're doing it wrong. When was the last time you turned over a head of lettuce to see what's inside? Or a box of rolled oats?
(This doesn't include checking for allergy information, obviously. Those rolled oats might be made in a facility that processes tree nuts. I'm strictly talking about the ingredients, not the safety or nutritional data.)
In fact, you can do your wallet, the planet, and your own health a favor in one stroke just by ONLY purchasing things with an ingredients list that you can correctly guess without peeking.
For example, istead of buying a box of Pop Secret Movie Flavor Microwavable Popcorn (ingredients: "Whole Grain Popcorn, Partially hydrogenated, Soybean oil, Butter, cream,milk, Natural & Artifical flavor, Color added, Preserved with Propyl Gallate") buy a bag of regular old popcorn (ingredients: "popcorn"). It takes about the same time to make it, and you can customize the levels of butter, salt, and propyl gallate to your liking.
Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user elmada