lisbet's Profile

Yeah, I totally agree with Baxatax. The city sells itself hard as green by widely publicizing what it does do and convincing non-residents that its changes are more systemic than they are. Most of the city has no real recycling.... and knowing Chicago, this new program will result in people actually stealing each other's recycling, which is what happens elsewhere (in Southern NJ many people have to lock their bins or keep them in the garage until the last minute.)

Don't believe the hype and the press releases! Fight for real green change!

Everyone must remove their shoes, even at a bigger gathering... the only exception is maintenance people of various sorts. I feel rude asking the plumber to remove his shoes... I have a sign on the door that requests people remove their shoes before entering.

We have had really great results and only needed to use one coat with Freshaire paint, which we nabbed from Home Depot. We claimed we wouldn't use it twice if it didn't deliver results... but it looks amazing on our walls.

Thank you for the detailed reply. I think we paid about $1500 for this sofa. The cushions do come out, but the arm is showing wear too. (It's a microsuede fabric.)

If I found an uphulsteror I would work with them to pick out the appropriate fabric. The structural integrity of the couch is still perfect, but Mom seemed to think that we'd pay almost the cost of a new couch to get it redone. Of course, if it's $1200 to get it fixed up with good fabric versus a ton more to start over with good fabric I'll fix it!

cyli- we won't buy IKEA couches because they just don't last for us. We had one and it fell apart pretty quickly and was replaced by this one.

I got most of the mixtures that work from various green cleaning books. My favorite for eco-cleaning tips is The Naturally Clean Home. Highly recommended!

They do use a lot of essential oils in their products.

For a tip- I order from the UK website and it's actually much cheaper. The products are priced lower there

Their statement about parabens, from Auntie Pamela, who works there is here (I might add they use minimal parabens- hence the expiration dates on their products):
http://forum.lush.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=49460&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=30

But if you can't read that:
----
And to repeat: there is nothing better than parabens with which to replace parabens.
People remove parabens from their products just because parabens are getting all the bad press and attention focused on them. They put in different preservatives which don't have the long term records that parabens to, or disguise them in other ingredients so you can't read that they are there, or they irradiate their products (and will absolutely will not do that!).
No-one says parabens are nice; preservatives are not nice; it's their job to kill bacteria which makes things go mouldy.
If a product is liquid it needs a preservative, or a method of preserving like freezing. Many, many 'new' preservatives are used to replace parabens then just get taken off the market five years later when they are proven to be unsafe.
We have decided to stick with what we know. We don't like them but we really HATE the alternatives.
New Scientist is very well respected but it follows trends like all other scientific journals (see the book Irrationality by Stuart Sutherland for a good explanation of this). If parabens are a popular topic them papers which cover this are more likley to get published.

At Lush we are yet to be convinced that there is any safer preservatives than methyl and propyl paraben. That is the only reason we use them. Try as hard as you like to get us to remove them, but until anyone comes up with a better one - we ain't shiftin'.

We are, however, making more and more products with no preservatives at all like Jellies instead of shower gels, Body Butters instead of body lotions, solid conditioners and shampoo bars instead of liquids. That's the way we do it.

I hope that's clear, but I expect I'll find it cropping up again. If you like, you can cut and paste this into a useful place and bring it back out whenever you see the point arise again. Saves me writing it out again.

Yours ever,
Auntie Pamela.

Twist Clean sells some really good ones, which are sold at my nearby Whole Foods. Their sponges are good in general!

Will have to try the Trader Joe's kind.

@Nudik - Have you tried Earth Friendly Cleaners' glass "kleener" ? It works as well for me.

Oh man, I have two rescue dogs already, but in the future? Hm, perhaps a brussels griffon from a rescue.

Where did you get that gorgeous table in the last image?

If I owned a home and they were willing to work far from Austin I'd hire them in a heartbeat.