What's Your Method For Being Green? By LJohnson on - Updated Oct 15, 2011
With young children in the house, and hearing a lot about harmful chemicals in many baby products, I decided to do some research. I found that the most popular product for baby wash/lotion/shampoo was Johnson & Johnson, and --- uh oh --- they used a lot of very bad chemicals to produce their products! Hiding behind the names PEG-80, PEG-40, Quaternium 15 and 1,4-dioxane, etc. these common ingredients add up to bad news for this momma! And, these chemicals are not limited to any one brand, you can find these ingredients in many products, including common household cleaners, adult skin care products, cosmetics - pretty much anywhere.
The bottom line is that these products are harmful, and the thing that concerned me the most is that with skin being very porous (ever wonder why using patches on your skin to serve as birth control, smoking cessation aids, etc. works so well?) and skin is the largest organ on our bodies, combined with the fact that children are still developing and thus shouldn't be exposed to such chemicals unless it absolutely cannot be avoided - well, I just didn't want to subject my kids to cancer causing chemicals.
Enter organic products. Made from pure, natural ingredients, with no hidden formaldehyde or other known cancer causing agents, organic products are putting my mind at ease. My favorite store, Target, now carries a quite extensive line of organic cleaning products called "Method". Luckily for me, there's even soaps in the Method family, and the Method Kid line is now what I use for my toddler. We use both the body wash and the 3-in-1 shampoo in the fuzzy peach scent.
If you've used organic cleaning products before, you may know that they don't seem to suds as well, and that seems to be true with the shampoo. I use enough to get his hair clean, but there aren't a lot of extra suds flying around like there used to be when we used other shampoo's. However, his hair gets clean, and the 3-in-1 does a good job with keeping his hair soft as well since the shampoo is a conditioning shampoo (the "3" part of the 3-in-1 includes conditioning shampoo and body wash).
I really like the Method Kid body wash, we use it on a body pouf and it does a great job, and the suds last the entire time he's washing himself. Again, it gets him clean, and I feel so much better knowing that he's not being bathed in chemicals at the same time. The bottles for the Method Kid line are very cute and kid friendly, they look like little animals with the bottle looking like an upside down "U" shape, there are little feet at the bottom, a little face, arms at the side, and a little tail at the back. Both the shampoo and the body wash are designed to be stored upside down, so all you need to do is pick up the bottle and squeeze out the product, no messing with opening any cap. This makes it very quick and convenient to hurry along bath time. As an added bonus, the bottles state very clearly that the products have never been tested on rubber duckies!
I believe Method also makes a baby line, I'm just waiting for it to be sold at our local Target so I can use that for our infant. I hope they hurry!
About The Author:
Method Kid Purchased at: Target Price: $6.99
I will have to check out the Method line-I didn't realize they have a line for kids!
These sound great and a cute bottle to boot!
wow this sounds like a great product...thanks for the information!
Great info on the products and what they contain. You sound pretty smart and I would trust your warning. Thanx
The "lather" is probably sodium lauryl sulfate, sodium laureth sulfate, or ammonium lauryl sulfate. All 3 are harsh chemicals that produce a lot of lather, which we’ve been conditioned to equate with cleanliness. It tends to make the scalp either very dry, or to cause the scalp to overproduce oil to try and compensate for the stripping. There are other ways to deal with oily hair, and your hair shaft just doesn’t need that kind of treatment. There’s also some studies that say that at least SLS is retained long-term in the liver and other tissues and may contribute to cancer, but the few studies on both sides of the argument haven’t produced anything besides either nigh-hysterical pro-organic propaganda or we’re-the-chemical-industry, trust-us manipulation, so the jury is out. Just know that you have a choice. And nobody argues that it’s harsh on your hair, and that lather isn’t necessary to get your hair clean. It’s also been known to cause hair loss.
When you have a kid with eczema, not lathering is a sign of a great product. As Reann said, the lather comes from some harsh chemicals, which tend to make my son's eczema worse. So far, I have really liked the Method products for him!