World’s Best Cat Litter Review

A review of something I haven’t personally test per-se, but my cat has. World’s Best Cat Litter has a great name, and has some claimed green credentials. Most normal cat litter is made from natural clay (or sodium bentonite), which is formed into pellets and dried. The clay is strip mined from the earth in a destructive process that leaves a indelible mark on our environment.

The corn used to produce the World’s Best Cat Litter are the same corn varieties approved by the USDA /EPA/FDA, and EU European Union for food use. This corn is also used to produce many ingredients, including corn sweeteners, food starches, corn oil, used in the production of high quality food and pharmaceutical products. This corn and/or its components are also used in the production of animal feeds.

Since the corn used is all natural and biodegradable, it is very safe for people, pets and the environment. There is no silica dust for you and your cat to breath in, if your pet ingests the litter it is digestible (so no need to be concerned about intestinal blockages), and over time the litter will naturally degrade and not be sitting in a landfill 100 years from now.

It claims to have unsurpassed odor control, and while it wasn’t the best in the world on that score, it wasn’t bad and not really noticeable as we clean the box regularly. Some people said their cats have not liked the texture, but ours didn’t seem bothered. It’s flushable but I didn’t try that as there’s no point (and I think it’s still not recommended in California at least).

Clumping was pretty good and scooping not a problem, overall it worked well. I would prefer to some degree that it wasn’t made of edible whole kernel corn that could be used for human food, rather than cat’s waste, perhaps looking at using some sort of inedible corn by-product.

You can buy it now from Amazon and pet stores of course!

Canova Aromatherapy Candle Eco Product Review

Alas, this is the last candle we have to review from Scented Candle Shop. Each one has been pretty decent in its own right, from tea lights to floating candles and to ones like this, a premium glass aromatherapy candle.

Made by Canova, this is an eco-soy wax candle with natural essential oils and a natural wick. What’s also nice to see is the recycled glass, which may account for the premium price, and the box is also made from recycled cardboard.

Hand poured in the UK, this particular scent is called Brainwave and is designed to “achieve that extra genius in love, work or play”. To do that it includes rosemary (to produce “mental clarity)< lemongrass (to "induce a state of calm") and neroli (to "stimulate the intellect").

What it all adds up to is a lovely smell, sort of fresh and fruity. When lit the smell doesn't dominate a room and doesn't really work as something to mask bad smells, but within a few feet of it the smell is lovely.

I'm not sure whether it helped my grey cells out at all but I quite liked it and with 50 hours of burning time it'll be around for a while. It's melts quite slowly with a very liquidy wax as soy wax goes and the flame is nice and bright.

The Canova Aromatherapy Candle costs £11.69 from the Scented Candle Shop.

St Eval As Nature Intended Scented Candle Eco Product Review

These St Eval As Nature Intended Scented Candles were scent by the Scented Candle Shop whose range of candles seems to have no end.

This is a triple pack which I lit together but each of the glass jars has a different scent – jasmine and rosewood, hay meadow and fig tree. Each glass votive is beautifully presented with a felt/material butterfly on the outside. The wax itself is vegetable wax and the wick is natural cotton. And the whole lot is handmade in Cornwall in the UK.

The scents come from essential oils and as I mentioned together they give out a lovely smell. One of those that you don’t notice when you sit in the room, but go out and back in and you really notice it.

As with this type of wax it goes very translucent when lit, but you don’t notice as it’s in the glass, you just have to careful not to knock them over on a worktop as you really can’t see where it went!

These St Eval As Nature Intended Scented Candles cost £18.99, slightly expensive but are more of a gift or a treat than some of the others we’ve reviewed.

Surya Brazil Nutritive Hair Mask Eco Product Review

The first thing you notice about the Surya Brazil Nutritive Hair Mask is the smell. Described in the accompanying pamphlet as an ‘all-embracing, exotic and seductive scent’, the Preciosa essential oil gives the product a very distinctive smell, a sort of fusion of eucalyptus and fir cones.

Although it took me a while to get used to, the natural woody scent makes a refreshing change from sickly, floral smelling non-natural hair products. You do really feel as through you are using a completely natural product on your hair.

The biggest problem with this hair mask, as with most conditioning hair treatments, is that you are instructed to leave it on for twenty minutes before washing it out. As someone who is constantly in a rush I found it difficult to add an extra 20 minutes to my shower time, which meant that I wasn’t able to use the treatment as often as advised (twice a week).

The instructions also indicate that you are supposed to wrap hair in a hot towel whilst waiting for the mask to do its magic. This made me think that perhaps the treatment might be better used in a hair salon, as I had no idea how to make my hair towel hot at home and thus had to use one at room-temperature as normal.

However, despite being unable to follow the instructions completely, I did like this hair mask. Many non-natural hair products can make hair feel silky and even slimy from the moment that you put the conditioner on. The Surya Brazil Hair Mask does not give you that initial slimy feeling but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it isn’t working. I did have to use a lot of the product to cover all of my long, thick hair and it is more of a paste than a liquid. However, after just one treatment my hair felt soft and looked much more shiny and healthy.

At £10 a go, the hair mask isn’t cheap but it does do the job and you don’t have to worry about covering your hair with chemicals. The environmental credentials of this hair mask are pretty good too as the Surya Hair Care range is certified by Eco Cert and vegan approved. All of the packaging is made of recyclable material and none of the products are tested on animals.

The 100% natural and silicone-free Surya luxury hair care range is available exclusively in the UK from Liberty or by mail order on 020 7734 1234.

Ecover Squirteco All Purpose Spray Product Review

The latest Ecover product for review is its All Purpose Cleaner, cutely named ‘Squirteco’.

As usual the ingredients are plant and mineral-based which adds up to it being safe around food, biodegradable and has a minimal impact on aquatic life. And its smell is lovely too, which doesn’t make it a better cleaner but is nice to have while you’re scrubbing away. But you don’t need to scrub too much, it works really well and because of the natural ingredients you can just stop after you’ve finished cleaning with no need to wipe clean the surfaces after.

The bottle is made from polypropylene and polyethylene, which are both 100% recycable, but as a nice touch you can also buy a refill bottle which cuts down on what needs to be recycled.

Available from supermarkets or places like Big Green Smile and Drugstore.com online, Ecover Squirteco All Purpose Spray costs around £2.15.

Ecover Cream Cleaner Eco Product Review

Anyone who’s environmentally friendly has heard of Ecover. Its products are in every supermarket and available online. And the product range seems never ending, even products like the toilet cleaner have new varieties out at the moment, the lovely-smelling ‘Ocean Waves’.

Cream cleaner is a simple staple of the cleaning cupboard and basically cleans anything in the kitchen or bathroom – enamel, stainless steel, chrome, tiles, cookers, sinks, baths, fridges and so on. In our household we tend to use it in the kitchen as we have method’s Tub Scrub for the bathroom.

Ecover’s version is friendly to the environment and contains plant-based ingredients. And it’s pretty easy to use and it works as well as any other cream cleaner I’ve come across. Using it on stainless steel does mean after cleaning and scrubbing you do need to give it a wipe after to get the shine back.

Available from supermarkets or places like Big Green Smile and Drugstore.com online, Ecover Cream Cleaner costs around £1.19 for 500ml.

Hepworth Blonde Organic Lager Eco Product Review

The word ‘blonde’ when associated with beer always makes me uneasy. I think of the fruity, heavy German lagers that don’t agree with me, so it was with some trepidation that I took my first swig of this blonde lager.

Sent to me by Vintage Roots, Hepworth Blonde Organic Lager contains only water, barley malt, hops and yeast. The Hallertau hopes supposedly give the beer a ‘floral’ note but thankfully, for me anyway, my taste buds didn’t notice it.

What I did notice was that it tasted great. I honestly didn’t expect it to. It has a lovely fresh and crisp bit to it and is really flavoursome. It was an unexpected treat.

Hepworth Blonde Organic Lager is available from Vintage Roots for £1.40 a bottle and is 5%.

Next Page »