My guest is Harmony Susalla, founder of Harmony Art Organic Design. Harmony has created designs and products for every retail level from Target and Walmart to Nordstrom and Williams-Sonoma and many points in between. Personal conviction and a desire to show the world that organic fabrics can be beautiful led Harmony, in 2005, to become the first textile company to offer only printed organic cotton fabrics and make them available by the yard for businesses and home sewers alike. Harmony Art’s stock fabrics feature organic cotton, wide-width, woven sateens and twills as well as knits. www.harmonayart.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Organic Cotton: Behind the Scenes
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Harmony Susalla
Date of Broadcast: May 22, 2013
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world even though there may be toxic chemicals all around us in consumer products and in the environment, and everywhere we look and everything we read about in the newspaper and listen to on the radio about how toxic everything is.
In fact, there’s a lot in the world that is not toxic. And that’s what we talk about here, how to protect ourselves from toxic chemicals, how to remove them from our homes, how to remove them from our bodies and all the wonderful things that are not toxic.
Today is Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013. I’m here in Clearwater, Florida. And today, we’re going to talk about organic cotton. We’re going to talk about some of the toxic chemicals that are in organic textiles, and we’re going to talk to a pioneer in the field of organic cotton. She was the first – I was going to say “the first woman,” but she’s the first person who created a business selling well-designed organic cotton fabrics that could be used for a variety of purposes, both commercially and for home sewers.
But before we meet our guest, I want to read you a quote from John Quincy Adams. Now, John Quincy Adams was the son of John Adams and Abigail Adams with John Adams being one of the founding founders of America, and I think the second president, if I’m remembering incorrectly. John Quincy Adams, his son was the sixth president of the United States. He said, “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish. A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle. Take action on what you have and that is worth more than having a whole lot of information than doing nothing with it.”
I think that’s really vital to this whole question of toxics because we really do make change one step at a time, one product at a time. Even if you want to change everything about your house, you really just start with one product.
So whenever you’re listening to the show and something catches your ear, and you think, “That would be interesting. I could do that.” Whether it’s just starting to clean your windows with vinegar and water or deciding you want to get an organic cotton tee shirt, or whatever it is, start with one thing and see how wonderful it is and then do something else.
So our guest today is Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art. And as I said before, I have to get her bio. Harmony has created designs and products for every retail level from Target and Walmart, to Nordstrom and Williams-Sonoma and many points in between. Personal conviction and a desire to show the world that organic fabrics can be beautiful led Harmony in 2005 to become the first textile company to offer only printed, organic cotton fabrics and make them available by the yard for businesses and home sewers alike.
She didn’t say, “Well, maybe we’ll just continue to offer toxic fabrics and have a little corner. We’ll have a few that are organic.” No. She jumped wholeheartedly out of the toxic textile world into organics. And she’s here to talk to us about that.
Hi, Harmony.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Hello, Debra! Thank you for having me.
DEBRA: You’re welcome. I’m so glad you’re here. So please continue the story for our listeners and tell us about your story of how you decided that you were no longer going to be toxic and you were going to be a pioneer in the field of organic fabrics.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Sure! Well, I have to go back in 2004, which I can’t believe is almost 10 years ago now, I was working for a textile design firm. My job, which I loved, was getting to create the patterns and prints that ended up on a variety of consumer products all over the market. And I loved what I did and the company had tasked us all to figure out what’s the next big market was.
And so being me, I gave it some thought and I decided that the next big move was going to be green movement, the sustainability movement. Organic food was already out there, I was an early adapter of that believed in buying things that were made as thoughtfully as possible.
And so I said, well, I put together a DVD, I started doing research and what I found was, to my horror and surprise, was that cotton was one of the most heavily-sprayed crops in the world. And not only was it one of the most heavily sprayed, but what it was sprayed with was some of the most dangerous things in the world too. I had no idea. You think of cotton, you think of the natural fiber. Unfortunately, that’s not really the truth.
So I put together a DVD. I actually flew to Chicago and went to the All Things Organic tradeshow that used to happen there with my husband who is very supportive, and started researching and then made the pitch to the company, and they thought, “Oh, yes. That’s a good idea. So when we have time and when your deadlines are up, you can work on that project as sort of a side gig.”
And the more I knew, the more convinced I was that not only was this the new market, this is the way the whole entire market needed to go in.
DEBRA: I had a moment like that too. It was around 2000 when I was working with some partners to open some green boutiques. And as I was working on that I went, “Wait a minute! There’s no point in having green boutiques. All the products in the world need to be green.”
And at that particular point, I remember there was a mail order catalogue that had a roll of recycled paper on the cover that you could buy recycled toilet paper from this mail order catalogue. And I thought, “Wait a minute. People are not going to continue to buy recycled toilet paper especially with a mail order catalogue. It’s going to be on every shelves.”
And it is now. You can buy it almost anywhere.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I love that we’ve gotten to see it really emerge. I used to have to make the pitch that green was the next movement, and now I don’t even have to talk about that. Everybody knows it’s happened. It’s here.
DEBRA: It is. It is here and I think that’s very good.
HARMONY SUSALLA: So it is. I got to the point where every project that I had to work on that was conventional, it was like a piece of me was dying.
DEBRA: Yes, I understand.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I couldn’t hold out any longer with the hope that one day, my pet project would see the light of day. And so, ultimately, I had to leave to survive truly. And that led me to Harmony Art because when I went to try to find another job where I could just be doing something I could believe in, the job didn’t exist. There wasn’t anybody hiring organic cotton textile designers out there.
DEBRA: I actually had the same thing. There was nobody who were hiring non-toxic writers.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Exactly! You know what I’m talking about. You have to create your own world when it doesn’t exist for you to walk into.
I was actually at a green business network conference and the key note speaker was Julia Butterfly Hill. Do you know her?
DEBRA: I don’t know her personally, but I know who she is.
HARMONY SUSALLA: For those that are listening that don’t, she is the woman that lived in a redwood tree for years to try to save them from being shut down. I lived in a redwood forest. I have a strong connection to the trees. And so I was waiting in line to talk to her afterwards, after her lecture. And the woman behind me in line, I started this conversation with, and her name is Kate Scott, and she was an eco-apparel designer. This is late 2004. Not many people doing that. And I asked her, “Do you use prints in your organic apparel line?” And she said, “No.” And I said, “Well, why not?” She said, “Because there aren’t any.” And that was the lightbulb moment.
I said, “Well, if they existed, would you use them?” And she said, “Absolutely. It’s just, they don’t exist.” And I thought, well I know how to design prints. So I guess I need to fill this market need.
Little did I know about actual production or marketing or sales or accounting or any of the other hats. I knew how to design textile. So I’ve learned a lot. It’s been quite a journey and it’s been wonderful.
DEBRA: Well, you’ve certainly filled the niche beautifully. And we’ll hear more about the dangers of what’s going on in textiles and what you are offering as an organic cotton alternative after this message. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and I’m here with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re here today with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art, who was the first business to offer only organically grown cotton fabrics and make them available by the yard for business and home sewers.
Harmony, let’s talk about some of the toxic chemicals that are in just ordinary fabrics that led you to decide that you needed to go organic. And actually, I just put up your toxic truth infographic on my website today so listeners can go there to my Green Living Q&A. If you just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, across the top, there’s a menu with all different parts of my website, and just click on Q&A. And right now today, the very first one is Toxic Truth.
And this one is written for choosing baby fabrics, but you’ve got some toxic chemicals listed here as being, I’m assuming to be the most important ones. And do you want to talk to us about those three?
HARMONY SUSALLA: Sure. What’s interesting about textile is there’s the growing. Well, in the case of cotton, there are all the chemicals they put on in the growing process, which are really deadly and dangerous. And then there are the processing chemicals that they use to add color and design and finishing to the fabric. And the three that I think are some of the scariest are lead, formaldehyde and then PBDEs and BFRs, which are flame-retardant finishes.
And I personally, if I see wrinkle-free, which sounds fabulous and we love the idea of not having wrinkled clothes and not having to iron, but when I see that I immediately translate those words into doused in chemicals because that’s really what wrinkle-free means. And stain resistance. Same thing. If it’s not going to wrinkle and it’s not going to stain, it’s got some sort of chemical finish on it. And until they come up with healthy finishes, I avoid those like the plague. I’d rather have a wrinkle and a stain than to be slowly breathing in things.
DEBRA: And also, they never come off. You can wash and wash and wash. And especially with things like wrinkle-free, cotton sheets or polyester cotton sheets. You’re sleeping on that all night long in a cloud of formaldehyde.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely.
DEBRA: It’s just not a good thing for babies or adults.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Right. And some of the scariest statistics, and I try not to spend too much energy on it, but I think it’s important the people know. Otherwise, they’re not aware. But one out of six American children currently has the developmental disorder of some kind. That’s crazy. And 12.4 have been diagnosed with asthma. And these have been directly linked to things, to chemicals found in textiles. I’m not saying they’re the only cause of these things but we know for a fact that lead and flame-retardant finishes and formaldehyde cause cancer, leukemia, respiratory problems.
We did this Textile Truth. We designed it with the consumer in mind of how do we help educate in a way because as you know, Debra, everything is, you start to look and then you’ve jumped down the rabbit hole of information. It’s sort of an information overload.
And we also know that none of us lives in a perfectly toxic-free world or we’re not on this planet right now.
DEBRA: That’s also correct.
HARMONY SUSALLA: So how do you make steps? And I think that’s what you do so beautifully. It’s to help people take those first steps.
So we put this graphic together. And actually, it was the brain child of one of my distributors who said, “Harmony, we need the dirty dozen and the [inaudible 00:18:00] for fruits and vegetables. Where do you start? If you’re going to make a change, where should you make that change first? So we need that for textiles.” And it was not as easy as it would seem to put something like together. It took us about a year.
DEBRA: Well, let me ask you this question now because when I first started out, there was no information. I had to go to toxicology books and things like that. And as I started piecing everything together, I started out saying, “Well, now which chemicals do I need to avoid? And how much can I be exposed to them?” And those are the questions that I was asking.
And then there was a moment where I took a quantum leap and I said, “No, it’s not about how many chemicals can I be exposed to and what are they. It’s more about what can I use instead.”
And so when I started discovering things like – well, at the time, there were no organic textiles. But there was organic food. And so instead of trying to figure out which pesticide was on my cucumbers, I discovered organic food and I said, “Oh, well we just need to jump to organic food.”
And it’s the same thing with textiles. We just need to jump to organic textiles.
HARMONY SUSALLA: That would be nice. I like the sound of that. I don’t know that we’re all going to get there overnight though.
DEBRA: I don’t think we are either. And I think that people do need to understand why we need to make that leap. And also, there’s a push me, pull you leapfrog thing that happens between manufacturing and consumers where consumers can say all they want. I want organic textiles. But unless there are designers and manufacturers and distributors and retailers and the whole system is on board to supply those new organic textile products, then they’re not there for the consumers.
And so it all needs to go hand in hand, and it does take time. And it takes understanding why we need to make a switch, and also having the product available.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I couldn’t agree with you more. I absolutely couldn’t agree with you more. And on the Textile Truth, it says the rule of thumb is if it touches my baby for an extended period of time or covers some sensitive areas, opt for organic.
Like you said, bedding. To me, if you’re going to start nowhere else, the place that you lay your head for hours of a time, invest in organic.
And if your favorite store that has those jeans or whatever that fit you just perfectly doesn’t have organic, just start asking for it. Every time someone walks into a store and just says, “Oh, do you carry this in organic?” You’re planting seeds of change. Even if it doesn’t exist yet, marketers they want to know what consumers want.
DEBRA: Exactly.
HARMONY SUSALLA: If you said, maybe it’s just one person making the comments, if you said, and then next Tuesday someone else does two, at the next sales meeting, people are going to be, “People are asking for organic.”
It really does make a different, every little request.
DEBRA: Well, we need to go to break again but after the commercial message, we’ll be back with Harmony Susalla and talking about organic cotton. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and you’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio.
DEBRA: This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re here today with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art. And you can visit her website at HarmonyArt.com and see all her beautiful textiles.
Harmony, these are all based on – tell us how you do your patterns because they’re all based on patterns you find in nature, right?
HARMONY SUSALLA: It used to be when I worked for big companies, they would have you go trend shopping where you would go to other stores and see what was in the market, what was hot. And now, instead of going trend shopping, I go trend hiking. At least two days a week, I try to get out on our local trails and see what’s in bloom, what the plants are, what the ocean looks like, what the sky is like. And I find it so rewarding and such an infinite source of inspiration. It never ceases to amaze me. Even though I may be on the same trails, they’re different every time.
DEBRA: I found that too. One thing that I really appreciate about you, Harmony, and I think you probably appreciate about me too, is that we both really have a sense of nature that we see nature and participate in nature. But for us it’s not just a world that’s not toxic. That it’s a whole world in nature which is a different thing than the world of industrialism. And I really see that in everything that you do.
And I think that that’s really where we need to go. I had an experience just yesterday where I’m working with a friend, helping writing and editing a book. It had a reference to nature and somebody else read the book and I said, “Oh, you should take out this reference because nobody will know what you’re talking about. That people aren’t oriented to nature.”
And it’s just that when I heard that I couldn’t believe it. And yet, I know it’s true that for some people, it’s like you and I have a sense of experience and reality. And when we look in our memory banks and our knowledge and our experience, nature is there as a real, living, experiential thing. And there were people who are missing that. It’s just not part of their information set.
And that just really came home to me today and yesterday when I was thinking about that. That was just heartbreaking to me.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I was going to say you’re making me want to cry.
DEBRA: I know. Well, I did cry. It did make me want to cry because it’s such a rich experience to me. And to think that some people don’t have that, I don’t even know what to say.
And so that you base your designs through nature, that’s part of your reality and part of what you want to bring to people, is so special to me.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I think it is part, again, of that deep connection, it drives me to have my life’s work be something that contributes to its collective health. And I think we’re a lot less separate than we think to the natural world. We like to think of humans as above and having dominion over. Nature is ours to use and exploit when we’re no separate from it. We’re just another part of it.
DEBRA: We can’t survive without it.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely.
DEBRA: You can’t have air and water and food.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Yes, exactly.
DEBRA: Where do people think cotton comes from?
HARMONY SUSALLA: It does seem quite ludicrous not to understand that we’re in a symbiotic relationship.
DEBRA: I know but this is how far our industrial viewpoint has taken us that people think that nature is someplace else or non-existent.
But anyway, let’s talk about organic cotton. How do you choose organic cotton? How do you know it’s really organic? Tell us about GOTS. What does that mean?
HARMONY SUSALLA: GOTS is the Global Organic Textile Standard. And when I launched Harmony Art beginning in 2005, there were over 40 different organic standards, and trying to figure out what to use is really a challenge. And when you’re a small producer, your weight of your order is not that strong.
Thankfully, a couple of years later, the Global Organic Textile Standard emerged, and I was pro GOTS as soon as I heard about it, mainly because in addition to the chemical part in the processing that they address, they also have a fair trade section. And as we know, especially with the recent developments in Bangladesh and such, and the human element of how we treat people too, is a big part of textile. So Global Organic Textile Standard takes it from the cotton, the raw, organic cotton through the finish products so that you know that the people and the planet haven’t been harmed.
DEBRA: And of course, the end user is not being harmed as well. The consumer.
HARMONY SUSALLA: That’s important too. So GOTS, we just got certified our warehouse, our fabric had been, for a number of years that our warehouse got certified, a year and a half ago. So we can offer fully GOT-certified fabrics to our customer, which is usually small businesses or retailers that then sell the fabric to home sewers.
DEBRA: And you have on my website, on Debra’s List, I have several websites that sell home sewers that carry your fabrics. And you also have listed on your website a number of businesses that use your fabrics to make their products.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely. And people always ask, “What do people make with your fabrics?” It’s like, you name it.
DEBRA: Everything.
HARMONY SUSALLA: From dog beds to baby beds to women’s apparel and all points in between.
DEBRA: Yes, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful fabrics.
HARMONY SUSALLA: It’s really fun. Sorry.
DEBRA: I’m just sitting here thinking what should I ask you next.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Well, what’s really fun is watching it come to life. I make the fabric but I don’t make products. So when I see someone take it and then have a vision for it, I call it bringing it to life. And to see someone using it is just even that much more exciting for me. And I love that co-creating process, working together and the relationships have gotten to develop with Harmony Art have been so rich. To be working with likeminded people doing something that feels important is so rewarding rather than being a number on the spreadsheet that someone’s looking to find the cheaper way.
DEBRA: Do people come to you and say, “I want to make a baby blanket. Would you design something blah-blah-blah?”
HARMONY SUSALLA: Yes, we do customer exclusive designs for people. That happens less frequently than people buying my stock fabrics. But we absolutely have that capability and have done specific projects. In fact, I have a library online, it’s password-protected, of over a hundred designs that I love to see the light of day.
Every time you get a fabric printed, it’s very expensive, and then inventorying it and everything else.
DEBRA: Well, once again we have the commercial break. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’re here with Harmony Susalla of Harmony Art. She designs 100% organic textiles and makes the yard available for businesses and home sewers. And her website is HarmonyArt.com. And we’ll be back after the break.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and we’ve been talking with Harmony Susalla from Harmony Art, and she designs 100% organic cotton fabrics which are produced by the yard and then made into all kinds of things with beautiful patterns that are based in patterns that you find in nature.
Harmony, could you tell us more about things, I’m looking at your website and you have a very interesting blog with different information about different aspects of the production. Tell us something more about that the listeners might not know about different parts of the production process, like dyes for example. I think the people know that a lot of pesticides are used in the growing of cotton and organic cotton is without those pesticides. But I think that most people don’t know very much about what happens next. So could you fill us in on what some of those steps are, what some of the problems are and how organic cotton is processed in a way that’s different?
HARMONY SUSALLA: Sure. The cotton has to be cleaned, then it gets spun into yarn, and then it’s either woven or knitted into fabric. And all along those steps, there are different chemicals that are often used, often petroleum-based with varying degrees of toxicity.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with William McDonough, the Cradle to Cradle.
DEBRA: That’s one of my favorite books. Cradle to Cradle.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Well, they did a study and found that over 8200 chemicals are routinely used in the production of textiles.
DEBRA: Oh, my god. I have no idea.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I know. It is crazy. But in each step, the dyes and then getting the dyes to adhere to the fabric, and then finishing the fabric and sometimes they put softeners on the fabric. As we’ve talked about a little bit before, there are symptoms and issues for flame-retardants. Don’t get me started on that topic. I think it’s possibly insane that we want to treat fabric so that it doesn’t catch fire.
DEBRA: When you’re not smoking a cigarette.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I don’t know. Did you see that report done by the Chicago Tribune last year?
DEBRA: Yes.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely phenomenal how the cigarette companies and the chemical companies are responsible for flame-retardants being added to all sorts of things. Rather than getting people to stop smoking, we’ll just cover their products in things that will poison them slowly, will kill you fast or burn you. You’ll just be poisoned slowly instead.
DEBRA: And then I’ll mix with all those other toxic chemicals that we’re being exposed to, and who knows what the result is of that mix and how they synergize together. This is why we just need to jump to organic cotton.
I won’t interrupt you.
HARMONY SUSALLA: No, the fact that it makes so little sense to me means it’s just a temporary thing. It’s nonsensical so it’s got to change. And I think there is a movement and a lot more awareness about flame-retardants. We see legislation coming up here in California to try to get rid of some of those requirements and foams and other things. So I think that there is hope on the horizon. In the meantime, all we can do is do the best we can.
DEBRA: Well, tell us more about dyes because I see low impact dyes. What does that mean?
HARMONY SUSALLA: That’s a good question. How about I define more impact?
DEBRA: Your things are very colorful.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Right. We use synthetic dyes. They’re not natural. And I’m sure you know this too that not everything that is natural is non-toxic.
DEBRA: That’s true. And not everything that is synthetic is toxic.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Right. So our dyes are not from a natural source. They’re not plant-based. They are synthetic but they have been screened for toxicity. And they’ve been screened so that the runoff from the water doesn’t end up back in the water systems. There is water treatment in place. They are monitoring that. That’s what the GOTS standard is all about, making sure that what you’re doing is done in the most thoughtful manner.
When I started, there was organic cotton available. It was just in, what I like to say, beautiful shades of oatmeal and granola. And well, I love oatmeal and granola colors but I thought, if this was going to go mainstream, it’s going to have to have some patterns and designs.
DEBRA: It doesn’t seem to have some design and some color and having gone through this whole fabric transition and watched it, oatmeal and granola, to what we have today, there was a certain time period when I was really looking at natural dyes, and I learned a lot about that subject. And one of the things about natural anything is that it’s temporary and fades out and biodegrades. One of the reasons why we have synthetic perfume, actually, the reason why we have synthetic perfume is because Coco Chanel decided that she wanted her perfume to last and last and last. And all the fragrances prior to Chanel Number 5, a woman would put it on at the beginning of the evening, and by the end of the evening, it was gone because it was all natural and it dissipated.
And Coco Chanel just happened to be there at that point in chemical history when synthetic things are being developed. And she found that there were synthetic fragrances and she made them popular.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Wow. I have no idea.
DEBRA: Yes, I didn’t know that before either. And now, I found that out. But it’s the same thing with natural dyes. That natural dyes are something that an artisan could work with, that you could make a color a color. But to make that same color over and over and over for thousands and thousands and hundreds of thousands of yards is a different thing. It’s something all these natural things are really artisan things. And that if we had 100% artisan culture, then more of these things would be available.
And they are available on the artisan level. When you’re starting to work on the industrial level, then you need to use materials that industrial system can produce to then put products into the industrial system. And we do need to be doing that right now as we’re going through a transition because people are accustomed to buying things on an industrial level. So to have something like organic fabric with a low impact dye is such a step in the right direction. That even though it’s not 100% natural, it’s not harmful.
And I think that people have an idea that if something is synthetic or petrochemical, it’s going to be bad, period. And that’s not the case. And on the other hand, if it’s 100% natural, it’s going to be totally safe. And again, that’s not the case.
So really, it’s about finding the things that are safe whether they are synthetic or natural.
HARMONY SUSALLA: I agree. And what I find, for me, I think if everybody just look at their own life, what they do every day for a job or with their children or in the store, and just made the best decisions they could, and we’re not all going to get PhD’s in everything, but just your day-to-day decisions and just made a choice to live the life and contribute to the things you want to contribute to, we would have a different world really quickly, if everybody did that.
DEBRA: I think so too.
HARMONY SUSALLA: And I don’t think it’s as hard as it sounds. We’re not going to be perfect overnight but just the little things and the big things. If everybody decided to just do the best they could, imagine how powerful that could be.
DEBRA: It would be extremely powerful because we, as consumers, actually have all the power. If we were to stand up and say, “This is what we want,” then Walmart and everybody else would follow because they are constantly doing focus groups and surveys to find out what consumers want. And if consumers would just stand up stand up and say, “I want organic this and I want organic that,” then they would continue to be more and more in the stores as they are now. And we could completely eliminate toxic products of all kinds by simply refusing to buy them.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Absolutely. And it could be a lot quicker than waiting for governmental agencies or companies to make their own good decisions. If something stopped selling, they would stop making it.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right.
We’ve got about a minute left before the goodbye music comes on. But I want to just get this in really quick. When I was looking at the opening quote from John Quincy Adams, I was thinking, “Wait a minute. Was he part of the American Revolution? No.” It was John Adams. And I started thinking about the Revolution and you know how quickly it went. It wasn’t overnight. It wasn’t one year. But it was a very short period of time that the United States went from being colonies of Britain to being an independent country based on freedom.
And it could change that fast by people deciding that we’re not going to have these toxic products.
I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Thirty years is a relatively short period of time but it’s only been in the last 20 years and 10 years but there has been so many more non-toxic products. And we can just keep going at that pace and just keep going.
Anyway, we have to go.
HARMONY SUSALLA: Thank you, Debra. You are amazing. Thank you for all you do.
DEBRA: Thank you, Harmony. You are amazing too. And I’m so glad that you are here today. Her website is HarmonyArt.com. My website is ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com. And we’ll be back tomorrow with more ways that you can thrive in a toxic world.
