7gen Bloc

This city of three million, the capital of Rajasthan, was built only several hundred years ago. Outside the city is the Amber Palace and Fort, one of the most amazing sites we have visited. Unlike the Taj Mahal, the Amber Palace was built as the home to a royal family. Its three foot thick walls hold running water that cools rooms in the summer, and the entire palace collects rain water for the nine month dry season. There was even a system to heat water for bathing.

Here I am again with more comments on what people are enjoying or learning while using Seventh Generation products. On the Ecotality blog, Steve Caratzas writes an article titled, “When You Gotta Go, Go Green.” He describes his admiration for Seventh Generation and appreciates the efforts and knowledge expressed by Seventh Generation. It is great to hear that someone is using the information on the website to educate people on how to make their homes clean for themselves and the environment.

Our journey through India continues. While we sit rather comfortably in a sleeping compartment with fans, windows and curtains, just ahead and behind us are cars overflowing with people who have paid about $2.00 for this 2 ½ hour ride. What’s amazing is that on Amtrak a similar trip would cost $50 - $100.

Yesterday in the Old Delhi market, my experience of this culture reached a more visceral level. I enter it with my son Alex and a grade school friend, Peter Graham. On the borders of the market people live with their families and animals. Cots line the edges of the street where people sleep out in the open. They cook, wash, children run naked, barbers offer shaves or haircuts, and people plead for money. This, however, is the exception, not the rule as one might expect. We were the only white faces among the thousands we could see.

I'm traveling in India with my family. One wonders if there is anything to say that has not been said before. A delicate smoke fills the air, coloring the sky with an endless smog. It's somewhere between burning wood, incense and exhaust fumes.

While looking at other bloggers who use our product, encourage others to live non-toxic lives, and generally promote everything we work for here at Seventh Generation, I became inspired. Reading about others’ passions and missions to save the Earth is incredibly rewarding. On the blog Something Good, O My Goodness writes about the irony of having to hide away the toxic cleaning products you spray all over your home. She rarely has children at her home, however when the occasion does occur, she realized safety is an important issue.

On Groundhog Day 2007 a small team of people (Stephanie Lowe, Jay LeDuc, Sophie Abrams-UVM student, Tim Grenier, me and one chair for the 7 generations-out-from-now) dove deeply into the questions around what we as a company

The wave of change continues to accelerate. For almost 20 years stories about whether or not household cleaning products are safe appeared only in relatively obscure environmental magazines if at all! At last these challenges are being raised in the mainstream media, specifically, in this case, in a big article in today's New York Times.

Greenbiz posted an excellent excerpt this week from a new report from Innovest that looks at the forces reshaping various industries whose products either consist of or depend on synthetic chemicals.