We have been trying several different brands of green dishwashing detergent to find the brands that work best for us and have the least impact on the environment. By green we mean a phosphate-free dishwashing detergent. The majority of normal detergents contain phosphates such as Sodium Tripolyphosphate or STPP. Phosphates aren’t inherently bad and in fact phosphates are in many everyday products . Phosphates are even used in fertilizers, it’s the 2nd number in the 0-0-0 convention, which is where the problem arises. When the levels of phosphates in lakes and streams are increased unnaturally it can lead to rapid growth of algae. Truhugger has a great article that explains phosphates and their impact in more detail.

It’s a pretty easy and not terribly expensive exercise in becoming green to move to phosphate free dishwashing detergents, but which one to choose? After testing several complete bottles of each we have found that the performance of Palmolive Eco is much better than Seventh Generation. Towards the end of our second bottle of Seventh Generation I began actively complaining about the quality of our glasses. Unless you thoroughly pre-rinsed the glass after our breakfast shake it would leave little strawberry seeds stuck all over the glass. When you fill a clean glass with milk and look down to see nasty dark spots covering your glass, it’s pretty hard to continue to drink it. Overall it did a poor job cleaning our dishes. However, Palmolive Eco works nearly as good as the previous dishwashing detergent that had phosphates. If you decide to try out a phosphate-free detergent I highly recommend Palmolive Eco.

When I was in college I stopped drinking caffeinated sodas and coffee. I quit for many reasons, but basically I was very addicted and it was making me moody as I would peak and crash throughout the day depending on my soda consumption. I have always loved the flavor of coffee so I switched to decaf when I moved off caffeine. I’m aware that I’m not 100% caffeine free as decaf does contain some smaller amounts of caffeine and I’m also hopelessly addicted to chocolate (who isn’t?) which also contains caffeine, so please don’t write in to tell me I’m a hypocrite.

Speaking of hypocritical, drinking coffee is not green no matter how much shade grown, fair trade beans you buy, as we literally live thousands of miles away from the proper climate to grow it. However, in our efforts to be better we are looking at ways to reduce the problems associated with coffee. Stephanie has started buying all organic free-trade coffee, but there are less options with decaf.

I recently started noticing coffee decaffeinated using the Swiss Water Process which piqued my interest to look into how it works and what it actually is. If you’re not aware of the current process for decaffeination it’s done using many different methods. They all basically put the beans in a mixture that leeches the caffeine out of the beans and into the mixture instead.  Then the caffeine is removed from the mixture and the process is repeated. However, the main difference is that most systems use chemicals to remove the caffeine and the Swiss Water Process uses only water to remove the caffeine.

The process is organic since it doesn’t use any chemicals and they can control it to guarantee their coffees are 99.9% caffeine free, but I wonder how green it really is if you look at the entire process. The beans can only be processed at their plant in Vancouver, Canada. So for the “local” coffee we bought that was treated with the Swiss Water Process in Kona, Hawaii. The beans had to travel to Vancouver, be treated with the process which requires water and electricity and then be shipped back to Kona, roasted and packaged for us at the farm to purchase as a local food item directly from the farmer. That doesn’t feel very green or sustainable. And I definately don’t believe it should able to be labelled as local. Is that greener or better than using coffee that was processed closer using a chemical process? I think we can have more of a greener impact on our coffee by insuring that it’s fair trade and organically grown, but the coffee does taste really good when it was decaffeinated using the Swiss Water process. Either way I don’t think I’m quite ready to give up coffee yet!