Ford Makes Over 100,000 Hybrids

Ford has produced it’s 100,000th hybrid, rolling off the line in Kansas City, with next generation hybrid, battery-electric vehicles and a plugin hybrid coming in 2012. Currently the hybrids are just the Ford Escape and Mercury Mariner vehicles, but the much discussed Ford Fusion hybrid, and the Mercury Milan hybrid come out next year, 2010.

“As we celebrate our 100,000th hybrid, America’s interest in hybrid vehicles keeps a does Ford’s commitment to advanced powertrain technologies that deliver greater fuel economy, lower emissions and help enhance our country’s energy security. No domestic automaker has more real-world experience with hybrid vehicle technology than Ford, and it shows in the quality and fuel economy of our vehicles.”
- Bill Ford, Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Company

With an increasing commitment to alternative fuels, and more environmentally friendly vehicles, hopefully the next 100,000 come along much sooner. Read more about it here.

Chartreuse Cleaning Products Eco Product Review

Chartreuse Products is a new “eco-chic” company based in Lafayette, California selling fashionable shopping bags, organic personal care and in the case of this review, earth-friendly cleaning products.

You’ve read many cleaning product reviews on Life Goggles, some already mixed and some you create yourself. What makes Chartreuse cleaners different is that they fully list the ingredients and they are sold in pre-measured concentrate pouches that use 75% less plastic than a bottle.

The pouches (and reusable bottles) pictured came delivered in an eco-conscious way, the pouches were wrapped in sticky backed bubble wrap (a first for me), but also 100% biodegradable plastic bags (which look just like the excellent Pooch Poop Pouches they sell!)

I received Organic Bathroom Cleaner with Cirtus and Ginger essential oils, Organic Hand and Dish Soap with Luscious Lemongrass essential oils, and Organic All Purpose Cleaner with Pepperming Zinger essential oils. All the pouches were concentrates so I simply opened the 4oz (118ml) pouches and poured into the provided 32oz spray bottles (or 20oz foamer bottle for the soap). You know the products are natural when the directions say “if ingested, drink milk or water”, and not “go to the emergency room”…

The soap is a nice product to use, foaming up and smelling great. Frankly, the bathroom cleaner smells wonderful. I’ve smelled (and drunk) worse cocktails than that, it must be because the ingredients are only saponified organic oils of coconut, olive and jojoba, distilled white vinegar, essential oil blend of citrus, ginger and tea tree, sodium borate, organic aloe vera and rosemary extract. The all purpose cleaner worked as well as I thought it would, and should do in an averagely dirty house like mine!

Check out their website for the cleaners, plus other cool stuff like recycled notebooks, biodegradable bags, fashionable shopping bags and personal care products. You can also become a reseller, or “consultant”, and they have a resource center answering questions such as how to read product labels.

Bringing Back Hand me Downs

Remember when you got given the jumper your older brother/sister had finished with instead of getting a new one? Well that never seemed cool to me, but British brand Howies is trying to change that.

It’s new range is called Hand-Me-Down and while not used in themselves, the products in the range are guaranteed for 10 years meaning you’re bound to pass it on to someone when you’ve had enough of it.

Currently just comprising of three bags and two jacket, the range obviously has good eco-credentials with the jacket being made from organic ‘ventile’ (a thick cotton) and organic tweed. This is a long process and means the finished product doesn’t come cheap – the bags are around £195 and the jackets a eye-watering £400. But it’s an answer to fast-fashion, something that’s not disposable and you’ll keep for years. And the jacket’s nice too.

Monte Bianco Clip Toothbrush Eco Product Review

So Organic recently sent me a toothbrush to review and while I have reviewed one before (the Preserve one here), they’re not the easiest things to review.

Except this Monte Bianco one is so different it’s quite easy to review really. It’s a toothbrush that you keep forever – well the handle at least. When the brushes start to wear out you just buy a replacement head rather that a whole new brush – saving on waste and also using oil to make the plastic for a new brush.

It’s a very good idea and works well. I was afraid to take the head off at first as it was a little bit of a struggle and I was afraid of breaking it. But if they made it too easy it’d come off in your mouth I suppose. So Organic also sells the replacement heads too and at £3.50 for three, it makes economic sense to buy them as well as being green.

The head on my brush has nylon bristles, making it vegan-friendly, but they do make a version with natural bristles too which are made from boar hair. They don’t even hurt the boars, just shear them like sheep.

Brightly coloured, the Monte Bianco Clip is quite a stiff brush and a little shorter than my previous one which took me a little while to get used to. It’s compact size means I’ve been keeping it in my toiletry bag and using when I go away. I like it just as much as the Preserve one but wish they could combine the two – have one made from yoghurt pots but with a removable head.

The Monte Bianco Clip costs £2.60 from So Organic.

Recycled Homes Made Loofahs and Corn Husks

Keeping your finger on the pulse of developments within the green world gets harder and harder with more and more sites and information out there. One useful little email I get in my box every week is from Springwise. Generally it has nothing to do with being green, but with innovation and trends. It does however, occasionally marry the two subjects and report on green innovation.

That’s how I found out about houses made from loofahs and corn husks. This is being developed in Paraguay where there is a desperate need for housing. A ’social activist’ called Elsa Zaldivar has found a way to combine the loofah (yep, the same thing you find in the bath), corn and palm husks, and recycled plastics into lightweight panels that can be used to make houses and even furniture.

The panels can be made into varying degrees of thickness and colours and if broken can be melted down and made into new ones. Handy.

Thanks to money from the Rolex Awards for Enterprise, tests are already underway and you can find out more about it here.

Lavera Men Care All-Round Moisturizing Cream Eco Product Review

Despite Lavera being German it seems to spell moisturising, moisturizing, which America likes and my spell-checker doesn’t. Anyway it doesn’t really matter, what does matter is whether Lavera’s All-Round Moisturizing Cream works or not. And it does, but it’s a bit of a longer story than that.

Male Organics sent me the cream which carries Germany’s organic certification BDIH and is good for the hands and face. As I’m not really into moisturising my hands, I’ve been using it after washing my face (with either Bulldog’s face wash or face scrub). And it works well.

It’s quite a thick cream but even with a beard it still rubs in nicely. I like the smell too. Bizarrely is smells of lemons more than Lavera’s shampoo (which may mean the shampoo is actually lime flavoured – I got a bit confused) and there’s only a tiny bit of Limonene natural oil in the cream. It also smells of almonds which is quite nice and better than other creams I’ve used. I would still prefer no scent but at least this is a pleasant smell.

The ingredients list is quite lengthy but seems to be mostly made up of essential oils and other oils and extracts. It’s vegan-friendly too so the ingredients are all good. In fact I’ve been pleasantly surprised how much I like this cream. The only complaint I can have really is that it’s quite a small tube for the price – just 30ml. This is more of a high-end cosmetic, not something I would normally buy. Although the results have been very good, I’m not sure it’s good enough to make me switch from cheaper brands. But if you’re buying expensive cosmetic products anyway, I would certainly suggest this as an alternative.

Lavera Men Care All-Round Moisturizing Cream costs £6.45 from Male Organics.

Green Your Storage

From time to time many of us have had to use storage facilities temporarily to store all that useful stuff that we just don’t need this minute. A company we have previously mentioned, Hall Street Storage, has now rebranded itself to iStoreGreen.

It purchases 100% renewable energy certified by Green-E* for its electricity. Beyond clean energy, it became known for creative green actions like offering biodegradable packing peanuts, clean reused packing boxes, smart green alternatives to bubble wrap like shredded paper from the office’s paper shredder, and a room for those who store to place discarded items that are given to local charity, rather than thrown into dumpsters and then landfills as with other storage spaces. Also desks for the company’s offices and shelving for the storage spaces are made from the wood reclaimed from the remodel of the Brooklyn building, plus they also have solar hot water heating.

It’s great to see a company using a traditional business model but greening it up so that they provide a better experience for customers at the same time as benefiting the planet. If you’re in Brooklyn or Manhattan (and soon, coming to more locations) and need storage, check out iStoreGreen.

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