Depending upon where you buy your groceries, you may or may not be familiar with Seventh Generation household products. Seventh Generation is “the leading brand of non-toxic household products for a clean home, a healthy family, and a safer world.” Their motto is a quote from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy: “In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations.” Sounds like a good plan if you could get the average American to do it. Now, on with the products.

Seventh Generation carries lines of dish soap, laundry detergent, and household cleaning products that are vegetable based instead of petroleum based. This means that the products are created from a renewable resource instead of a natural resource that will be depleted someday.

These products also lack chlorine, which contains harmful toxins, and phosphates (water softeners), which cause algae to bloom in ponds and lakes, leading to the suffocation of aquatic plants and animals. All of these items come in different scents, or in what the company calls Free & Clear, which contains no perfumes or dyes.

I personally love Seventh Generation dish soap. You can use it not only as dish soap, but also as a hand wash, because it’s so mild. The reason for its gentleness is the fact that it contains no chlorine. I buy the Free & Clear dish soap, so I also use it as a vegetable wash. I’ll bet you wouldn’t do that with petroleum-based dish soap!

The laundry detergent, like the dish soap, doesn’t contain chlorine. Instead, it contains non-chlorine bleach, which readily degrades into oxygen and water. My husband is allergic to any kind of perfumes or dyes, and most laundry detergents contain both. We’ve never had a problem with this product. The best part is, you don’t seem to need as much detergent per load of laundry. Maybe that will help to alleviate most of the sticker shock in the check out when purchasing this brand.

I have a different opinion of the household cleaning products made by Seventh Generation. I’m not saying that they don’t work, because they do. However, I’ve had just as much luck with my own household concoction of one part water and one part 3% peroxide in a spray bottle. If I want it to smell good, I squeeze a lemon into the mixture. I suppose the whole thing depends on if you have time or feel like making your own cleaning solution.

Okay, now that the cleaning products are out of the way, we’ll move onto paper products.

Seventh Generation paper products are made out of 100% recycled paper. Post-consumer materials constitute at least 80% of this recipe. I don’t know about you, but that seemed a little un-nerving to me at first. I wanted to know what I was wiping my table, my face, and other unmentionable places with. After I realized that it was whitened with non-chlorine bleach, I felt better. Especially after remembering that most other brands of paper towels, tissues, and toilet paper are bleach with chlorine, which, as I said before, contains very dangerous toxins. So if you can handle your toilet paper feeling like the toilet paper at the mall, then I definitely recommend these products.

The next section of this review is for women, but men should read it too, because it gives a little more insight as to why staying away from products containing chlorine is so important.

Ladies, do you know what dioxin is? This toxin is present in any products that have been subjected to chlorine… including your feminine hygiene products.

“So what does that mean?”, you ask. Well, the toxins found in chlorine have been directly linked to cancer, birth defects, developmental disorders, and reproductive disorders. Seventh Generation carries a line of pads and tampons that are chlorine free. Do I really need to convince you?

Studies show that children are disproportionately affected by a daily exposure to toxins. Until Seventh Generation unveiled their line of diapers and baby wipes, people had to use cloth diapers and a wet rag to save their child from toxins. Now, however, we have a solution where health meets convenience.

I haven’t used this product, but I can say this: Anything is better than cloth diapers.

Enough said.