I've been a member of Sierra Club for a couple of years, now. I keep telling them I do not want the national SC magazine but it's apparently compulsory. I also keep telling them I'm a member when they send the guilt letters and emails telling me it's time to renew. But I digress.
I also get the Suwannee-St. Johns Group SC Newsletter, which comes out monthly. This I like to read because it's way more relevant to my little corner of the world, but occasionally some national-chapter type stuff sneaks in. Like this curious article I read in the May issue, entitled, "Sierra Partners With Chlorox Company." Apparently, Sierra Club is endorsing the new Green Works line introduced by Chlorox earlier this year. You know Chlorox, they make bleach and other similarly harmful (albeit useful) products that we overuse a lot.
Anyway, the article says that the Green Works products will sport the Sierra Club logo on the label, and "Sierra Club will receive a significant financial commitment from the Green Works brand in 2008."
I've used the Green Works brand of toilet bowl cleaner -- it's apparently derived from natural ingredients. If you let it sit in your toilet bowl for awhile it does actually clean it pretty well without a lot of elbow grease -- most of my elbow grease issues stem from a need to drain the bowl and apply some Lime-Away...or Naval Jelly.
The article intimated that this revelation has caused a bit of controversy among members and with good reason. The press release about the partnership (try it here, and if you can't reach it there, try from here, go to "Conservation" and go through a really annoying login process), said that the products are derived from coconut and lemon oils, but nothing about whether or not they contain petroleum products.
That was my first question; my second question was, "why doesn't Sierra Club just endorse Seventh Generation, instead?" Well, someone named Siel pre-read my mind and blogged about it for the LA Times, asking the exact same questions. She's pre-psychic, obviously -- anyway, she says that the Green Works products do have petroleum products. Read the post, it is very informative, and one of the commenters states that, lest we forget, there are no guarantees about the products being cruelty-free, something Seventh Generation can make a claim to.
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