April 25th, 2007 - Local versus organic
Like the argument over paper versus plastic, there’s a new over organic versus local. Which is more sustainable, evironmentally friendly, etc.
The problem for me is paper products. I have known for a while that P&G products such as Puffs and Charmin are not made from sustainable wood forests. This saddens me because I really like these products. Yes, I’ve tried others. No, haven’t found them as good. Well, except for Charmin; I can live with other brands, but Eric really likes it. Same for Bounty paper towels. I tried Seventh Generation tp (worked fine), tissues (thin and rough), and towels (didn’t absorb much at all, really lousy). So, at least with the tp, it seems like I should go ahead and buy 7th Gen. I should keep looking at other friendly tissues and towels.
Until I add into the equation that P&G produces Bounty, Charmin, and Puffs 45 miles away, employing 1030 people. Which makes these products really quite local. If I buy them at Target, maybe they’ve traveled a little farther for warehousing, but at stores like Menards or Pick n Save, which are regional businesses (as in headquartered within 45 miles also, I believe, and in the latter case having no stores outside a few hundred miles if even that far), they are unlikely to have come very far at all. (Except, I do mostly buy paper products at Target, and I have no idea what their warehouse practices are.)
in the interest of fairness, I should mention that other brands may also be produced here, as we have SCA and Kimberly-Clark factories even closer. I’m not sure which products are made around here. Maybe my next step is to check on their environmental-friendliness and find out which products are made here.
Keeping the paper factories going is actually of big concern to the local economy. But which is better: local or environmentally friendly wood?
You know, I have no idea where 7th Gen products are made. I think of them as a Vermont company, but of course the products aren’t all made in factories there. Maybe one of the paper companies up in the Valley actually makes them? How would one go about finding out?
August 20th, 2007 at 7:39 am EDT
[…] A while back, I wondered whether I should buy locally produced paper products or 7th Generation ones. So I wrote to 7th Gen to see if any of their’s were made local to me (since I live in the paper products capital of the US, I think–this area produces so much of the nation’s paper products that we’re on a top list of places to be hit by a nuclear attack. Or at least we used to be. Do they still keep such lists?). […]