My guest today is Amy Ziff, Founder and Chief Capidealist™ (someone who believes that world change will come about through harnessing our collective purchasing power on the free market) of Veritey, a website that makes it exceedingly simple to find products and services that are healthy. Amy puts an amazing amount of work into evaluating the products she sells and rates each one for being nontoxic, sustainable, cruelty-free and socially responsible. We’ll be talking about where to start once you decided to eliminate toxics from your life as well as her own process of choosing toxic-free products. Amy is a trained journalist, proven entrepreneur, start-up veteran, and healthy living advocate. She never wanted to work at a women’s magazine writing about make-up. Amy always was looking for ways to make a difference, and to find better ways to live a healthy life. When she became a mom, everything came together. Amy was frustrated by how hard it was to make what should be simple decisions – healthy decisions – for herself and her family. For years as a hobby, Amy has been seeking out the truth about products and their real ingredients. (What companies put in their products can be shocking, including known carcinogens and other toxic chemicals that can cause an array of conditions from asthma to infertility, and which are often not disclosed.) Amy believes you shouldn’t need a PhD to decipher what products are safe to use and which to avoid. Yet the reality is that getting to the truth of what’s in a product can take hours of research and a lot of legwork. Most busy moms and parents just don’t have that kind of time. Veritey makes it simple for people who are time pressed to make healthier decisions. Veritey is about where truth meets healthy living. www.veritey.com
TOXIC FREE TALK RADIO
Where to Start Eliminating Household Toxics
Host: Debra Lynn Dadd
Guest: Amy Ziff
Date of Broadcast: June 24, 2014
DEBRA: Hi, I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and this is Toxic Free Talk Radio, where we talk about how to thrive in a toxic world, and live toxic-free.
It’s a beautiful summer day here in Clearwater, Florida. And we’re going to be talking about something simple today. We’re going to talk about where to start if you want to be eliminating toxic chemicals from your life, from your home. Where do you start?
I remember a long time ago when I first started, more than 30 years it’s been now. I had no idea where to start. And there were no books. There were no radio shows like this one. There was no place for me to even ask that question.
And now, of course, we have a tremendous amount of information. Sometimes so much information makes it difficult to decide what do you do first.
I first asked myself this question back in 1986 after I had written my first book, and people were saying, “What a great book.” It was called Non-Toxic and Natural and I listed all these different non-toxic products I had found.
And then people were saying to me, “But where do I start? Where do I start?”
So I wrote my second book called The Non-Toxic Home which put everything in order of what I thought was most important.
But what I found from doing that was that it was hard. There isn’t a hierarchical list that you can’t say this one thing is most important, and this other thing is least important because everything has a different level of toxicity.
But there are some easier things that we can do, things that are easier to do that make a bigger impact in terms of reducing your toxic exposure.
That’s what we’re going to talk about today. It’s where to start. And even if you’ve already started, you might pick up a few tips of things that maybe you haven’t done yet that are things that are important to do.
My guest today is Amy Ziff. She’s the founder of a website called Veritey. Her purpose is to make it exceedingly simple to find products and services that are healthy.
And so she does a tremendous amount of research into her products. I know that one of the things that’s happening now is that to live toxic-free is getting so much more important that there are a number of products and websites that are just popping up, where people who really don’t do their research, just say, “Oh, I just want to cash in on this.”
But Amy is not one of those kinds of people. She really is dedicated to finding out what is the truth about the products, and giving you only a very small selection of products that she has personally researched.
Welcome to the show, Amy.
AMY ZIFF: Thank you, Debra. Thanks for having me.
DEBRA: Thanks for being here. So tell us, how did you get interested in this.
AMY ZIFF: Well, it was a long and a quick and efficient journey all at the same time. When I was nine, I personally had a health crisis, and my mom refused to listen to what the traditional doctors were saying. What ultimately ended up making me well was changing my diet, avoiding certain allergens.
They’re common today, but in the 70’s, this was radical. It was going off of corn, sugar, and gluten.
And then it turned out that I was allergic to a lot of stuff in my home, molds and dander, dust and different mites and trees.
And so I became very aware at an early age that what we surround ourselves with is so impactful to our own health and wellbeing. And it can really make the difference between surviving and thriving.
And so I was surviving.
Then we cleaned up our home environment, my diet, and I was able to thrive.
Then fast forward into my own journey into parenthood. I have three children, and I had my first child, five-and-a-half years ago, and then I had twins after two years later. And one of my twins was incredibly allergic to things that I thought were natural, things that certainly were labeled as such.
I was an eco-shopper, and I went to Whole Foods, when I could, for products. And I thought I was buying really good products for my children. And so I thought, “What could possibly be in these products that could be bothering my daughter? What’s going on here?”
And I have a background in journalism, and also, I’ve been an internet entrepreneur.
So what happened was, the journalist in my started digging and digging and digging, and going, holy moly. There is so much stuff in our everyday products, and especially, products that we’re using on children and babies that is not very natural at all, and is not safe or necessarily what I want to be using for my kids.
And there is no uniformity in labeling, and there’s no way to really know this unless you become your own detective [blues], and really do your homework.
And so that’s what I started to do. And then before you know it, I was keeping those massive lists, and that grew into a database that became the real basis for Veritey, my site, that helps people find, what I’d like to say, the truth in healthy living.
We’re really looking at the truth in one these products are. The bottom line is, I want to use safe, non-toxic products for myself and my family in order to give my children their best chance in life. And as a parent, I feel it’s my responsibility to keep my little ones safe.
And so I don’t want to invite in toxins that are related to anything, any kind of issue. It could be asthma. It could be ADD. It could be cancer later in life, or infertility. It just really spans the gamut.
And now, knowing what we know about genetics and epigenetics, and the ability for these chemicals to be modulators on our genetics and our DNA, we realize, wow, it really does not matter what we surround ourselves, and particularly, in those early years.
So that’s how I got started. I did this deep dive into products and toxins a couple of years ago, and I’ve been non-stop ever since.
DEBRA: Well, it is important to do the deep dive. I’d just like to jump in and say that for many years, especially those of us who are older like me, and have been around for a while, back in the 70’s and 80’s, 1970’s and 80’s, that was in the last century.
There started to be products that were called natural products. And this was at the time when everybody was wearing polyester leisure suits, and plastic was thought to be a really good thing.
And so as opposed to that, then there were these natural products that were not made from better living through chemistry. They were products that were made from natural materials from nature like cotton, for example, or a natural food was any food that didn’t have artificial color and flavorings and preservatives.
That was as far as it went.
And so the only thing about a natural product that’s natural is that it starts as a renewable resource. For most natural products, they then are processed through the industrial process, and various toxic chemicals are added, and various good things are taken out.
And so what comes out at the end isn’t anything like what it started at the beginning.
How many years has that been? 30 years, 40 years, since we started having natural products? As time has progressed, then the natural products have become purer and purer, and they’re now being made out of organic ingredients.
But there’s still a wide range of what’s called a natural product. And as consumers, we can’t just say, “If it says it is natural that means that it’s safe.”
We can’t say that because there’s so much industrial process behind it.
Certainly, if you have an organic apple on your hand, that’s pretty safe. But if you have something called natural apple pie, it could have anything in it.
AMY ZIFF: That’s right. Natural will have all kinds of additions in food. You can have MSG in natural flavors, for example. So it’s a great way of pointing out that the word, natural, has such a wide berth at this point in time given that there is absolutely zero legislation around what that term means that we can’t really trust it.
And in fact, I remember looking at this Johnson and Johnson cream that I was using on my kids, and it said it was hypoallergenic. So here I am thinking, okay, this one’s safe. Well, it turns out it contains something called DMD hydantoin, and that forms formaldehyde in the bottle.
So I certainly don’t want to be slathering my kids with formaldehyde-based cream.
DEBRA: I have to interrupt you because we have to go to break, but we’ll talk more about this when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Amy Ziff, founder of Veritey, and we will come back and talk more about natural products, and how you can get started removing toxic chemicals from your home. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Amy Ziff. She’s the founder of Veritey. How do you pronounce that word actually?
AMY ZIFF: It is Veritey. It’s a fictional word that we based on the actual word, verity, which in Latin means truth. So we are truth in healthy living, but we tailored for your life.
So we blended that together, and came out with Veritey.
DEBRA: Oh, I see. I get it. Good. Very clever. I like having that truth in the word. I knew the Latin word for truth, but I was trying to figure out exactly what this word was.
So tell us, let’s go on to talk about where people can start. What’s the first thing you would say?
AMY ZIFF: I’d like to say, start wherever you’re at. And here are my three principles in that. One, keep it real. And when I talk about keeping it real,
I’m really talking about the [inaudible 00:11:20] in your life, from real ingredients into what you are eating and buying. So that applies to your couch, or the foods you’re going to eat.
It should be untreated within keeping it real. Think about you want to get whatever it is you’re buying as true to its original source as possible.
So there are lots of things that go in here, and of course, tons of nuances. But you can really keep this very basic, and just think about this. Keep it real. Ask yourself what [inaudible 00:11:53] in this product. If you don’t know, ask the person you’re buying it from.
If they don’t know, or they give you this exhaustive speech, it’s probably not going to fit into this rule, keeping it real.
Try and keep it unprocessed. And if you can’t get totally unprocessed, minimally-processed.
And the reason why I mention this, it applies to your couch, is that couches are one of the most toxic elements that most of us have in our homes because, of course, there’s a lot of processing that actually goes into furniture. This is something that often shocks people.
So happy to talk about the flame retardants, and how to get those out, but again, it is something to really think about in my rule.
So one, keep it real.
Two, keep it simple. This is where you just think about less is more. Less handling of your products, less manipulating of your products is better. And fewer ingredients does best for it as well.
And again, that’s whether you’re buying a snack bar, or furniture. These complicated compressed woods that have been highly treated are usually also highly toxic in your home. So going back to the basics can really help you on this.
Again, so keep it real, keep it simple, and then this is the key, start with whatever it is you need next. That might be a toothbrush, that might be a desk, it might be a couch, it might be baby food. I really, really mean it.
Start with the very next thing on your grocery list, and let’s start attacking it there because I believe we can create change through shopping.
Women control 85% of the wallet share in this country. And if we don’t start applying what we know to how we shop, we won’t create a new change.
But if we do, wow, are we a force to be reckoned with.
So women, let’s get together. Let’s take that 85% of our wallet share, ad let’s change what kind of products are being made in this country by demanding to know what’s in them, keeping it real, keeping it simple, and starting what we need next.
DEBRA: I completely agree with everything that you said.
AMY ZIFF: Like minds.
DEBRA: Yes, like minds, exactly. Well, what I found in this field is that there really is a truth. There is a truth. And that if we get down to that truth, and we just keep applying that truth, then we’re going to end up in the right place.
And that truth is that for the most part, and I say for the most part because, just because something comes from nature doesn’t mean it’s not toxic.
There are plenty of natural toxic things in the natural world.
But for the most part, people aren’t making products out of things like botulinum toxin. They just aren’t.
AMY ZIFF: Well, you are not getting botox, but it is truth. And the other thing is that nature has so cleverly designed the natural world that most of the toxins are not, and intentionally so, bio-available. It is only the manipulation of them through human interaction that we’ve made a lot of these toxins bio-available. Lead is a great example of that.
So we’ve taken something natural in the world, but it wasn’t bio-available, and we’ve made it extremely bio-available. And now, we have a real problem on our hands with lead that needs to get cleaned up.
And most people are unaware of it, and unaware of how to deal with it. There are a lot of people that I talk to that think that’s going to be a really pressing human health issue in the coming decades, even though we took it out of gasoline, and we got it out of paint. Shouldn’t it be gone?
But all of those houses that were painted in the 70’s with lead paint are now sweltering. So it’s around. You have to be careful.
And that can be scary. Once people get scared about going non-toxic, I think it, very quickly, can get overwhelming, and people want to put their heads in the sand, and just say, “Well, I can’t do it. I’m going to do it like I’ve done before, like my mother did it, like my neighbor does it, and we’ll just keep going forward that way.”
But I’d like to say, please, please, please don’t do that. It can be scary, but you’re not there alone. As you’ve said Debra, there are so many resources nowadays. Reach out. Veritey hopes to be a lifeline in that crazy sea of “what do I dos,” and try and help point you in the direction that could be safer, better, healthier for you. It does matter.
When we look at diseases in this country, and what’s happening with childhood cancers having grown 25% since 1975, one in three kids having autism, one in six U.S. couples struggling with infertility. These are all related to toxins in our environment, and products that we may or may not be using, but are surrounding ourselves with.
Chemicals are, as I’d like to say, they’re uninvited guests to the party of the life that we’re living here. And we’ve got to take control back, and get these toxins out.
I really encourage people, don’t get overwhelmed, know that knowledge is power, and take some control back. You can do it, and you can start it with your very next product that you have to buy.
DEBRA: That’s great advice. I totally agree with that too. Again, great minds thinking alike.
We need to go to break in just about 10 seconds. So I’m not going to ask you another question right now. But when we come back, what I want to do is ask you about you were talking, and I agree, that whatever is the next product that you buy, then buy it non-toxic.
So we’re going to talk about that when we come back.
You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Amy Ziff, from Veritey. We’re talking about how to take that first step to start removing toxic chemicals from your life. And we’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Amy Ziff, from Veritey. We’re talking about how you can get started removing toxic chemicals from your home.
So Amy, let’s just role-play for a minute, and do a little example of somebody’s made a decision that they are going to start with the next product that they buy, and buy something that’s less toxic than what they were buying before.
So they go to the supermarket, or wherever they’re shopping, and they decided that they’re going to buy pickles. So what’s the process to go through to take that step?
AMY ZIFF: So you want to buy pickles, but you’re not really sure how to determine whether your pickles are non-toxic.
So you’re in the store, and the first thing you’re going to do is go to the pickle section, and start looking at different containers.
Now, I can tell you just from bringing up this image of pickles in my mind that one of the things you’re going to notice is color variation on these pickles. So if you flip over the labels, then you want to look for, are there artificial food dyes, or what is free of those.
A lot of the pickles that we get are not actually normal color. The color that seeped into them is from added dyes because manufacturers think that’s what a person expects the pickle to “look like.”
So you look for words, in general, pickles and otherwise—this serves as the catchall, but for things you can’t recognize or pronounce.
So when you see a string of alphanumeric numbers, and it’s like a jumble of letters, [inaudible 00:20:05], they probably don’t have something real in there. That’s a chemical. That didn’t happen in nature.
With pickles, again, you’re going to look for something contains no natural flavors because natural flavors are anything but. They’re a catchall much like fragrance can be a catchall for all kinds of chemicals and additives in your personal care items.
With foods, natural flavor is one of those ones that I’m always wary of, and won’t buy unless I’m really clear on what that is.
And then simple, simple, simple. So the pickles that I like most and my kids just go crazy for have about five ingredients, none of which are sugar, by the way. So it is possible to find. It’s salt, it’s vinegar, it’s some very specific spices, depending on how hot or how not hot, I guess, that I like the new pickles. My husband likes [inaudible 00:21:10].
Some of those spices go up and down. Garlic, usually typical, salt, and water. That can make a really fine tasty pickle.
And that’s what you’ll be looking for.
One of the things you’ll compromise in this is you may not be able to keep those pickles outside of the fridge, and you may not be able to keep those pickles for a year. Things that have no preservatives in them don’t last a long time.
It makes sense. Now, vinegar and salt do act as natural preservatives, so in this case, the pickles were lucky. They’re not going bad anytime soon.
But that said, they may have an expiration date.
So it’s something to be aware of. But I think we’ve all gotten into this mindset of buying in such bulk things that we don’t necessarily even need. It just seems like a good deal at the time. And so we have to reverse that thinking a little bit.
And when you’re trying to buy less toxic, often times you’re not buying in bulk, you’re creating this whole ethos around you of using what you need, and trying to use it all, and using less.
And for anyone out there whose next question is, “But how can I afford it? These things are more expensive.”
I always like to say, when you do this, when you go non-toxic in your life, you start evaluating everything, just like what we did with the pickles.
You’re flipping over, you’re looking at that ingredients list, and you’re realizing, “There’s all this stuff in here.” And then you say, “Maybe I can do without.”
So for people who I go in to their home, and I’m looking at their stuff, and we’re talking through it, they stopped using, I would say, more than 50% of what they had been using. It turns out we don’t need dryer sheet.
DEBRA: No, we don’t.
AMY ZIFF: You can stop spending your monthly allowance that you were spending on your dryer sheets, and put that into a higher quality, essential oil-based, scented laundry detergent, for example. And right there, you’ve cleaned something up.
And baking soda, vinegar, lemon, those things go a long way in cleaning your home. The lemons are pricey, but not really when you stop buying all of these premade things.
And I’m not advocating for everybody making your own DIY. It’s a little bit too far along the path, but there are really good, simple products that you can get that aren’t made of too much more than that that will help you go a long way and detoxing your life because the cleaning stuff that we use in our home is really a significant source of what’s called indoor air pollution.
And our indoor air is 5 to 10 times more polluted than our outdoor air.
So another [inaudible 00:23:48] open your windows every day, people, because that will really help you literally breathe easier. And if you live right next to a road, try and open the windows on the other side of the house or the apartment.
DEBRA: Good. So I want to go back to pickles for a minute because I just discovered something. You can go online and search on pickles label, and all these different labels will come up from all these different brands of pickles. And you could just sit here and look at the pickle labels and their ingredients for as long as you like until you find a pickle that you like.
Now, here’s one. I won’t tell the brand name because I’m going to criticize it. So it has cucumbers, vinegar, salt, garlic, turmeric, natural dill, oil, salt—fine so far. But then there’s sodium benzoate, and that’s a preservative that you don’t want to eat.
We’ve already mentioned artificial colors. I’m looking at another label here with ingredients that are so small, I can’t read it.
AMY ZIFF: Sodium benzoate is one that really bothers me because once you set it, and it jumps out, you will start to notice sodium benzoate is in a lot of your food, and it’s in almost all of your personal care products. There isn’t really enough research on sodium benzoate.
There’s the research that does exist definitely points towards the fact that we need more research because it’s doing some funky things in lab rats.
So I think we have to be very careful with the fact that it’s coming into our bodies, not just through what we ingest, but also through what we put on our skin. We absorb as much as 80% of what we put on our skin.
And suddenly, you have this synergistic effect of a chemical that we don’t really know what it does.
DEBRA: So here now, I’m just picking these labels at random. This one I’m going to mention, this is Bubby’s Cultured Dill Pickles. It’s made from cucumbers, artesian well water, salt, calcium chloride, garlic, dill and spices.
Now, that’s a pretty good one. The thing that I would be red flags for me still is that it’s not organic, so there are pesticide residues in it. There’s also a note on here that it’s non-GMO-verified. So this is not a GMO pickle.
We need to go to break. We’ll talk more about this when we come back. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and I’m talking with Amy Ziff of Veritey. We’ll be right back.
DEBRA: You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd, and my guest today is Amy Ziff from Veritey. That is at Veritey.com. Amy, you want to spell it?
AMY ZIFF: Sure. It’s V-E-R-I-T-E-Y dot com. Veritey.com.
DEBRA: So we’re going to talk about in a minute what you can find when you go to Veritey.com, but I want to say that if all this talk about ingredients, strange-sounding ingredients that we’ve been talking about with pickles sounds like, “What are you talking about?” I just want to say that when I first started learning all of this, and remember, I was trying to learn it in an environment where there was no help at all. Nobody was talking about this subject at all.
I just started with one chemical. I think it was formaldehyde, in fact. And my father bought me a chemistry dictionary. And I looked up the word formaldehyde, and it told what the health effects were, and it told how formaldehyde was made.
The difficult part was finding out where it was in products, which I had managed to do. But that was a different book entirely.
But what I want to say here is you’re going to look at the pickle jar, and it’s going to say polysorbate 80. It’s going to say sodium benzoate. And you’re not going to have a clue what that is. But it’s a good idea if you see those words to just not eat them, is the first thing.
But the second thing is that you just start with just one product or one chemical, and you just start. And then as you start looking at more labels—I know what sodium benzoate is because I’ve seen it so many times. And just start seeing it.
AMY ZIFF: Yes, you get better and better.
DEBRA: And you get better and better the more you read the labels, and you start recognizing it. If you just say, “I’m going to learn sodium benzoate. I’m not buying any products with sodium benzoate,” and then what you’ll find is, I think you’ll find you just won’t go to the supermarket.
You’ll just go over to a natural food store instead, which doesn’t mean that 100% of the products there are okay. You still have to read the labels.
But you’re not going to find sodium benzoate in most products in a natural food store. There’s going to be a whole list of things. You’re not going to find in a natural food store that you will find in the supermarket.
So you can do things like read a lot of labels, but you can also do things like you can come to my website and look at Debra’s List. And just go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and look for shop in the menu. You can go to Amy’s site.
We both already have products that we’ve done the label-reading for you, that we’ve chosen these from our expertise. And so you don’t have to start over again.
And so if you’re looking for food product ideas or what kind of shampoo to use or any of those things, you can just go to my site or go to her site, and see what we have to say because people are already reading the labels for you.
AMY ZIFF: That was one thing that I really learned, Debra, was that. It was hard to find—when I started, I didn’t know about you at the time, unfortunately, so I was really having trouble finding someone who had done this before. But as I’ve gotten deeper and deeper into this, I do find that there are other resources.
You get better at it, and you start, as you say, recognizing things, then you get a little bit more sophisticated. And the reason why our symbol is an onion is because this whole thing is constant. And even today, I’m still learning. And I’m sure you still are.
DEBRA: I’m still learning.
AMY ZIFF: I moved cross-country and my goal was to create a non-toxic home, and sadly, I was made aware that doesn’t exist, and that’s an impossibility. But I have probably pretty close to have created as non-toxic as it can be in this day and age. And then I know what to fight back with against the toxins, what kind of plants to surround myself with, and all that.
But that has been a real process. And so you start where you are, you start to make it [inaudible 00:30:52]. And then you get better at it, and you realize the connection, and that we are living in an ecosphere that is totally connected, and that your whole world is you can’t just reduce the toxins in your home without starting to think about what you’re ingesting.
So you mentioned GMO’s when we left off with the pickle. That’s really an important, I think, if you’re trying to avoid toxins, to try and start getting out of your diet. And they are everywhere.
For sure, nothing with high fructose corn syrup is going to pass the test anymore because that is pretty much guaranteed to be GMO. Canola oil goes on that list because it’s a genetically-engineered product.
It can be shocking. Things you think or thought were healthy turn out—this is rewriting that book, so it is really important to lean on people who’ve done this before, so you don’t have to shoulder all that burden. And know that every single thing you do to make a difference in your life, to be a less toxic, to reduce your chemical footprint, I often say, when you’re doing that, everything makes a difference.
That is good news for your body because our bodies are made to detox.
DEBRA: Every single thing that you do, don’t think that a jar of pickles is too small. Start with a jar of pickles.
AMY ZIFF: No, it makes a difference.
DEBRA: And tomorrow, you get organic ketchup.
So what I’d like to do, we only have about five minutes left of the show, could you just give us a couple of suggestions of things that somebody could just walk into a store and buy, and have it be less toxic. I would say, go to a natural food store, and buy anything that has the organic label on it. If you can see the USDA organic symbol, and just look for that, and buy something that has that on it.
So what’s one thing that you would say that for somebody to go find a non-toxic product?
AMY ZIFF: I would say some of the biggest things—I tend to look at this in terms of in your home, what are the biggest things that you could get out and replace. With [inaudible 00:33:07] things, it’s a little bit different, Debra, from starting in store, but I’ll tell you why I’m getting there.
So I think about the most important thing you can do to support your body is create a healthy boudoir. Get a bedroom that isn’t off-gassing.
And so if I were going to the store, I’d be thinking about, “What’s in my bedroom? Maybe I’m not ready to throw out all my furniture and start over.”
And that’s probably a good thing. But you want to think about what’s touching you every single night. You spend a third of your life in bed, generally.
The statistics say. Eight hours of your day is going to be in bed and asleep.
Well, make sure you’re using a laundry detergent that you’re breathing in and out that’s going to be non-toxic.
DEBRA: Good suggestion.
AMY ZIFF: Now, I’m going to the store to get my non-toxic laundry detergent, but there’s still many claiming all kinds of things. What do I do and where do I look?
Again, this is where you keep it real, keep it simple, and this is what you need, but look for a brand. And often times, this is a generalization, but if you’ve made it to a health food store, they’re going to have stripped out a lot of things from this.
So you’re not going to see the Tides and the Whiffs of the world. You’re going to be seeing some alternate brands. And they do span the gamut. I personally really like the Ecos, the earth friendly products brand. You can get it free of scent, or you can get it scented with essential oils.
I think they’re pretty good and clean.
Seventh Generation is not perfect, but you know what? They’re so much better than others that I think. They’re good.
If this is sounding really complicated and overwhelming, you could go to a service like Honest.com, and order direct. Their products, again, not perfect, but the truth of the matter is, if you’re using someone like Honest.com, you’re still so much better than 95% of what’s out there.
DEBRA: That’s exactly right.
AMY ZIFF: I want people to feel that they can do this, that they can start, that they can make differences in their lives.
Perfection is something we can all strive for, but it’s really hard to achieve in any aspect of our lives, including going completely non-toxic. So make it easy. Go easy on yourself, so that you feel good because you know what, there is proof that when you buy something that’s good for you, and good for the environment, maybe they’re 1% for the planet, and giving back, that makes you feel good, and you get an endorphin rush.
“Now, that product actually works.”
And you continue to use it, there’s a whole cycle of goodness that’s happening for you, for the world, for everything. And that’s what I love.
DEBRA: And you should take whatever step you can take in the right direction. I didn’t start off with the most non-toxic products. I started off saying, “This is what’s available. This is what I can afford. This is what I understand.”
And now, I’m pretty sophisticated in my choices, but it took me many years to learn this. It took many years for the market to start catching up. It took many years—
AMY ZIFF: You were the pioneer.
DEBRA: Yes. Thank you. I was.
AMY ZIFF: You were. And now, it must seem really easy when you look out at the world. You’re like, “This is nothing.” You are so lucky.
DEBRA: It is. People who are starting now are very fortunate because other people came before. Yes, there are possibilities.
At this point in time, there does exist a non-toxic solution for everything. It’s just about knowing about it, and some of those things you need to make yourself. But you can eliminate so many toxic chemicals. And I’m going to have to stop talking because the show is going to be over in two seconds.
Thank you so much, Amy. You’re listening to Toxic Free Talk Radio. Go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com to find out more, to listen to past shows, to find out what’s coming up, and even listen to this show again. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
I was a minute off.
This show is over at 12:56 and 30 seconds. It’s now 12:56. I ended at 12:55 and 30 seconds. So we do have a few more seconds. But what I want to say is that people should do what they can. Every step helps, and you can go to Amy’s website, Veritey, I don’t have it right in front of me, V-E-R-I-T-E-Y dot com. And you can go to ToxicFreeTalkRadio.com, and find out more about products that you can choose that are toxic-free.
AMY ZIFF: Go non-toxic. You won’t regret it.
DEBRA: And this is the end of the show now. Thanks, Amy. This is Toxic Free Talk Radio. I’m Debra Lynn Dadd. Be well.
