Shopping Greener

It's great to have stores like Earthfare around, where you can buy local foods, and organic and earth-friendly products. But if you're not close enough to shop one of their stores, where can you find paper products made from recycled paper, or phosphate-free cleaning products? If you wanted to shop with sustainability in mind a year ago, it was hard to find good choices on the chain-store shelves.

Lately, we are seeing many more ways to shop in an environmentally-conscious way. Harris Teeter has been doing it for longer than any local stores that we've seen. Their store is EnergyStar rated, and is the only place we've been able to find our favorite recycled paper products like Seventh Generation and Green Forest ("Soft on nature, soft on you").

While we use cloth kitchen towels as much as possible, we still have use for some paper towels, and we will always want tissue for noses and bathrooms. All Green Forest products are made from 100% recycled paper, whitened without chlorine, made from a minimum of 40% post-consumer recycled paper.

Seventh Generation says, "If every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of 120 ct. virgin fiber paper towels with our 100% recycled ones, we could save 1,000,000 trees."

That's what we need. Wish Harris Teeter would just stock a little more of these two brands, because they are often low on them, more than any other brand. For some reason, they are not on their web-shopping site, although they are in the store.

We've requested those paper products on Lowe's Foods shelves. Lowe's Foods has improved their offerings of cleaning products, including Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day baby cleaning products, Seventh Generation cleaning products, and new Palmolive Eco+ phosphate-free dishwasher detergents. Phosphate can be harmful to our streams and lakes by over-fertilizing algae plants, and depriving the water of oxygen; see the Assabet River for an example.

Thanks, Lowe's for the cleaning improvements; but until you change your paper aisle, we'll be buying tissue from Harris Teeter!

Beginning to Share

Welcome to Carolina Green Sense! We'll make it easy to find earth-friendly resources you need for living lightly in the Carolinas.

It is very important to us to nurture our land, water, and sky as we enjoy them in North and South Carolina. There are many 'green living' signs in media lately, and we're glad to see them. We are joining the chorus.

We want to provide simple ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle the things we use to live in these beautiful States. We'll bring you resources for buying local and organic foods and growing your own; ways to conserve water and energy; renewable energy and eco-friendly solutions for helping to care for our environment.

We have searched out many treasures, and want to make them easier for others to find. It makes sense to share them with you, our friends and neighbors!