Tag Archives: ocean

Reading this blog, you are taking the first step to doing your part to reduce your carbon footprint.  Perhaps you haven’t fully committed to a waste-free lifestyle, but you are on your way.  Here is another simple switch you can make to help green your life: clean green.  It is becoming easier to find cleaning products that use non-toxic, plant-based ingredients that work just as well as their toxic counterparts.  However, most of these green cleaners are still sold in bottles made from virgin plastic.  Step up your eco-friendly game by buying a green cleaner made not only from recycled plastic, but from plastic recovered from our oceans.  Method recently introduced a bottle consisting of 25% ocean recovered plastic.

While all of Method’s sleek and modern looking bottles are made of 100% post consumer recycled plastic, the new ones will include plastic elements recovered from the beaches of Hawaii and California.  Beach cleanups provided the plastic used to develop the new recycling method as ocean recovered plastics are more difficult to upcycle than land recovered plastic.  Method revealed its new process preceding International Coastal Cleanup Day, from which it intends to receive more plastics for use in its bottles.  Each bottle of Method cleaning supplies purchased will remove 10 grams of plastic from the ocean.

Image: Treehugger.com

Over the past 10 years Method has grown from a small, San Francisco based, eco-friendly start up to a national brand carried by major retailers.  The company’s commitment to sustainability and shaking up business as usual has made it a model for other eco-startups and an inspiration to small businesses everywhere.  This is in part due to its authenticity.  Post-recession Americans are finicky about spending money, causing the slightly more expensive green options of major brands to drop in popularity.  Though, since Method’s branding and production process has proven trustworthy and authentic, the public has continued to believe in their eco-chic cleaning line.

So next time you find yourself in need of laundry detergent, soap, cleaning wipes, spray cleaners or hand sanitizers check out Method’s eco-friendly options.  Not only do they offer the cleansing properties of other toxic cleaners, they smell good, look good and now, help clean up the mess that is our Pacific Ocean.

Did you know that your sunscreen could be killing the coral reefs? Many sunscreens are petroleum based and therefore non-biodegradable and toxic. Chemicals in most sunscreens are known to activate viruses in the algae on coral reefs, causing the algae to die and leave the coral unable to produce energy for the surrounding ecosystem. Slowing down this process is as simple as changing your sunscreen.

When purchasing sunscreen, read the label. Avoid products with chemicals like Octocrylene, Butylparaben, Octylmethoxycinnamate, and Benzophenone-3 that do not breakdown in water. The same principle applies when you shop for food: if a 5th grader can’t pronounce an ingredient, it’s probably not natural and we all know that the fewer processed ingredients we put in our bodies and in our water, the better.

It is estimated that 5,000 tons of sunscreen gets washed into our oceans every year. So even if you think the small amount you put on your family may be negligible, it adds up. Simply doing your homework while shopping for sun protection can help save these unique ecosystems from erosion. Therefore, to maintain the vacation destinations that we so avidly seek to visit, all we have to do is make conscious decisions. A simple change in the sunscreen aisle is all it takes to make sure our coral reefs are around for generations to come.