earth day!

Today is Earth Day. If you stumbled upon Google today you would have seen this.
Google posted in the form of an iceberg that is partially under water - melting. A smart way to signify & bring to our attention the current state of the earth & her environment - Global Warming. Good one guys!

If you did managed to catch Oprah on Friday, the topic of her show was Going Green. Ordinarily, I am not a huge Oprah fan but somehow the TV was tunned to her show. I don't know how that happened but I was glad. There's lots of ways you can make difference. Please visit the link & click on the many other links to find out how you can go green. It's time to get on that green wagon!

A lot of kids growing up today suffer from allergies, asthma or some sort of respiratory illness. Growing up, I had never heard of asthma or allergens, until my move to Canada whereupon I realised what a common place these aliments are among children & teenagers. Many children here in Bermuda suffer from the same ailments like the rest of North America. But what is it about the environment today that encourages the presence of these ailments among the very young?

One would be quick to blame the air, the smog or the ever increasing pollutants in today's environment but perhaps the answer lies close to home. A couple of years ago, I watched a documentary about boy who suddenly developed a severe case of allergies. The doctors could not figure out the root cause & after months of tests there was still no answer to be found. His mother then decided to take matters into her own hands. She began to keep a journal of everything that she did all day. A few weeks into her documenting, she noticed a pattern. Her son's allergies were full blown at beginning of the week, about the same time she cleaned house. And then the realization that it was the cleaners, just regular household cleaners that she was using to get her place squeaky clean. Well, she went into overdrive: she rid her house of all the cleaners she could possibly find & began to research into all natural cleaners, launching herself into a multi million dollar business. But I digress. The end result was that once upon making the switch to all natural cleaners, her son's allergies disappeared.

Practically the same situation with the couple that appeared on Oprah's Friday show. Their son was diagnosed with respiratory problems with the beginning signs of asthma that landed him in the hospital. A bit of research later they came across Shaklee, a line of all natural cleaning products. They switched & liked the products so much that they bought the company. Seriously? I digress again, the point is that their son recovered after the switch.

All natural cleaning products are just the way to go it seems. Whether it's Shaklee or Seventh Generation, these all natural products are better for the environment, all the while creating a cleaner environment for you. All those dyes & perfumes in regular petroleum based cleaners are just creating a toxic environment at home, especially since with the aircon or central heating we tend to air our homes less & less. The result: we exist in our own self made oven.

So what should clean really smell like? Nothing. Clean apparently, has no smell. That's the way it should be, the good old natural way. So, why is it we have the sudden urge to light a scented candle when we smell nothing upon entering a room? What is this urge we have to making our interiors smell like lemons or some other scent?