This is an excellent article that offers a realistic viewpoint to the “Green” conversation. I love thinking through why we, at Unique, and why we, as a society do the things we do. The realistic side of “going green” is that its a great ideal but it must work and be economical in real life. Read the article and let it make you think. I’ll offer some of my thoughts on this article as well:

Many feel that it is now every person’s responsibility to become more green.  I don’t buy that, rather I feel it is the responsibility of every green minded student, entrepreneur, scientist, etc.  to find ways to make it inevitable for people to become more green.  We do this by thinking up new products and services that are better and more cost-effective in the long run for the consumer.  I can’t tell people that they are better off using say, Unique’s Carpet Shampoo unless I am confident that it is competitively priced with less green competitor’s and that it works as good if not better.

If someone has a huge amount of disposable income its one story, but for most of us who live within budgets and tight finances (especially with how difficult things are right now) it is asinine to think that socially we are expected to purchase products that are more expensive and work less effectively, but that are environmentally friendly.  Some have done this, rather its on us to create products that are effective, cost-efficient, and “green”.  It will take work, but its worth it!  What’s your take on this article?

In the aftermath of the “going green” barrage, we have a new issue facing consumers and businesses. Because “green” is so undefined most companies have attached their marketing to this concept whether they are truly green or not. Is a company green because they “greened up” 5 % of a 100% toxic product, because as far as I’m concerned it is still far from “green.”

So what makes a product green then? Is it that a product is more environmentally friendly than it was the previous year? Is it that it leaves no carbon footprint (almost impossible)? Or is it that it is more environmentally friendly than the other options in the marketplace? I have a hunch that these questions will need to be answered in the coming years, now that the marketplace has been “greenflooded” and the consumer can’t tell green from smoggy!

My thoughts were spurred on by a fascinating article by Julie Deardorff in the Chicago Tribune, check it out.

I’d love your thoughts, and in the next blog I will take a look at Unique’s efforts to answer these questions for ourselves as we carry the burden of a “green” brand.

Socially Conscious Investing

My local state newspaper, the Denver Post, featured an article on its website called “Going Green because it feels good” by Ben McKee, and in this article he talks about how investment trends are beginning to take on a green tint as socially conscious investing is beginning to grow. The article cites that $2 trillion are currently being invested in companies that are responsible for socially and environmentally conscious products and services. Essentially its investing with a conscience!

Denver is hosting a traveling seminar called BaseCamp SRI 2010, focusing on equipping investors to invest in socially conscious companies. It is scheduled for Wednesday, May 12th from 9am to 4:30pm at Hotel Monaco, located at 1717 Champa Street. Cost is $20.

Road Trip w/ the Dogs!

We all love to travel, but while traveling what do we do with our four legged friends? Traveling with your pets is becoming the latest, greatest trend! Many hotels cater to the four-legged crowd. Not just affordable places but many are 4 and 5 star hotels. The Kimpton hotels are extremely welcoming to your pets. I also found many web sites:
Pets On The Go, Trips With Pets, and Pet Travel.

Fido Friendly magazine has several hotels listed in each issue. One bed and breakfast in New Mexico even gives your dog swim lessons.

As much as I would love to take my dogs with me, when I fly somewhere I have to leave my three (I can’t imagine taking three large crates to the airport) at home but I have great friends who come and stay with them so they can keep their routines, maybe even get more hikes that I can provide.

This summer I think I will have to take a nice road trip and bring the gang with me.

Haha . . . maybe someday!

Well, our Cane Corso puppy is now in his dog teens.  A dog is considered in his/her teens from 9 months to 1 ½ years. This is the time that most dogs are turned over to shelters.  Why, you ask, it’s for the same reason people get frustrated with their human teens. Your sweet baby no longer pays attention or listens to you like they seemed to do just a couple of weeks ago. But you can’t just turn them over to someone else, not that I could a dog either, but that is a whole different blog. The cute cuddly puppy is gone and replaced by a dog trying to test the waters. Now is the time of staying on the disciplines you have hopefully, started from the early cute stages. Exercise is huge a tired dog is a happy, well behaved dog.

But there are some other great things to do as well. I have joined a tricks class. It engages their minds as well as connects them in the relationship they have with you. Using a clicker and some very extra yummy treats we start with the simple hand touch, step onto boards, boxes, etc. It is not about obedience but taking things they already do and building on that, and turning it into a trick. Romeo loves to use his paws, so when he starts to do that we say “shake” and give him a treat.   So now rather than paw at us, he can sit politely and shake.   Next, I want to get the shake to a wave but that will take more practice. He can do the commando, which is crawling and rolling over, but you need a pretty big area for those long legs. He can turn in a circle and is learning how to walk backwards. He loves to carry things so I am fixing up a bucket handle and we are going to teach him to carry it and build up into putting things in it (yah right) but you never know. The great thing is he and I both have fun, he gets to be with other dogs, but not play with them, which is a real challenge for him.  The best part is that it uses his brain and mentally wears him out. Plus, when you have friends over you bring out the dog and entertain them!

Imagine my excitement when I found out Martha Stewart (whom I am a huge fan and have been receiving her magazine and watching her show for years) chose our Super Digest-It safe Drain opener as the product she recommends for treating clogged drains in her book Homekeeping Handbook! On page 62 she talks about safe ways to take care of a clogged drain. She says:

“Various enzymatic drain openers also dissolve clogs safely, including a product called Super Digest-It, which consists of freeze-dried blocks of bacillus bacteria. These microorganisms literally eat the material interfering with your plumbing, turning it into carbon dioxide and water.”

Wow, to have an icon of safe, efficient and effective cleaning recommend us is priceless! Plus the book is full of other great information written in a great easy-to-use format, which is why I have been a fan of hers for so long.

Being an avid sports fan, whether playing or watching, a constant problem that I encountered was odors. Haha, I better specify, not so much from watching sports but from playing sports. Whether in a baseball glove, sweaty clothes, hats, or shoes, odor stains were a constant issue. Those of you who are parents of little athletes or those of you who play sports know that this is a consistent issue and at least for me solutions were difficult to find. Even after washing my gear in the washing machine there were still light odors that were left. And for everyone, athlete or not shoe or sandal odors are a consistent issue. When I began working for Unique a year and a half ago I found my solution: Athletic Equipment Odor and Stain Eater. Most of the other products that I had used just tried to mask over the odor but our all-natural cleaner, uses bacteria to actually eat up the compounds that create the odor smell. Therefore there is nothing left of the odor stain. I’ve found nothing like it on the market.

Some high schools out in Minnesota have been using our Athletic Equipment Odor and Stain Eater for the equipment used in their athletic programs and they now swear by the stuff. The great thing about this odor eliminator is the fact that each quart is concentrated 10:1 therefore you purchase a quart of the Athletic Odor Eliminator and that one quart makes two and a half gallons!

When it comes to odors and stains we don’t only offer the best Athletic Stain Eliminator, we offer products that effectively and safely eliminate carpet stains, coffee stains, even grass stains on clothing. The best part is that our product is green and completely safe to humans, animals, and is environmentally friendly. Heck we even make a All-Natural Drain Opener that is the only drain opener that I would use on my toilets because it doesn’t use harsh chemicals, it’s environmentally friendly, and most importantly it works! To check out these products click here.

Comparing Bacterial, Enzyme and Chemical Cleaners

When it comes to cleaning up odors and stains, you are offered many different options. In the past we’d deal with our pesky carpet stains using a chemical-based cleaning product that would break down the stain or odor. With the recent call to “Go Green” new solutions to odors and stains have begun popping up to replace harsh, harmful, and unhealthy chemical cleaners. You may have also seen enzyme cleaners in stores. These are the common answer for a green cleaner or all-natural cleaner. But, now there is a third answer, Bacterial cleaners.

Two years ago I would have had no clue whatsoever what all these different types of cleaners are or what they do. So now that my whole life is entirely committed to knowing cleaning products (Yeah “whole life” and “entirely committed” are slight exaggerations), let me enlighten you as to what the difference is between Bacterial, Enzyme, and Chemical cleaners. I’ll keep it brief because too much of this information could bore people to death.

Chemical Cleaners- Typically they use chemicals to break down the chemical bonds that create the odor or stain. Often times harsh chemicals are used that may break down an odor or stain but can also create health risks and even a small amount of breakdown to the material that is being cleaned. For a time these cleaners were our only options and thus did the job the best they could, but now with the aid of science and better technology we have other options.

Enzyme Cleaners- This type of cleaner uses enzymes which attack the odor and stain and break them down. Enzymes are not living organisms and therefore cannot multiply or reproduce themselves. They break down complex compounds into more simple ones. Enzymes promote the natural chemical breakdown of complex matter (including stains/odors). Sometimes this breakdown is enough to get rid of some stains, but there is leftover material from the stain even if you can’t see or smell it anymore. You run the risk of this leftover material resurfacing and the stain showing up again.

Bacterial Cleaners- Bacterial cleaners combine both enzymes and bacteria. In nature all things break down or decompose as a result of bacteria. Bacterial cleaners use the same bacteria found in nature to eat away the stains and odors leaving behind nothing but water and carbon dioxide. It’s the same process nature uses. Bacteria also multiplies and reproduces itself so it eats faster the longer it’s allowed to live. Bacteria produces enzymes that work the same as explained above, basically preparing the stain to be more easily digested by the bacteria. Water is the lifeline of bacterial cleaners. Once the spot that has been cleaned the bacteria dies leaving behind only water and carbon dioxide.

Now that winter weather is gone from Colorado (I hope that assumption doesn’t come back to bite me, it is Colorado after all!) it’s time to get those grills back into shape for some summertime grilling. This past weekend was beautiful, 70’s during the days with amazing thunderstorms each evening, so on Saturday I pulled the grill out to get it cleaned up. At the Swadley House (we named the house after the street we live on) the grill gets a good workout year around, being that 4 guys live at the house, I’m sure you can imagine the heavy use it gets. We actually have 3 grills in the backyard but we mainly use one. The other two just add to our “man resumé!” The grill that gets the most use I would guess is about 10 years old, it’s been tested and approved, but being a house full of guys it hasn’t been cleaned in probably the past 4 years. So, on Saturday I decided to give it a good ‘ole cleanin’. One of the products that we make at Unique is called Grime Eater. It’ll eat it’s way through grease and grime on engines or oil spills on driveways. It even took splashed on cement off the side of a friend’s car! So, I figured it would be good to test it on our thoroughly dirty grill. I diluted the Grime Eater 5 to 1 in a spray bottle and every 5 minutes for the next 30 I thoroughly sprayed the grill rack and tray underneath. After allowing the Grime Eater bacteria to begin to break down the grease for about 30 minutes I began to scrub at the rack and then I sprayed it off with a hose, and to my surprise much of the grease came off leaving behind sections of pure stainless steel. If you’ve cleaned your grill before you know that ever seeing the shiny steel is nearly impossible, no matter how long you spend cleaning it! I was shocked! The bacteria ate away at the grease and grime and did the work for me. Later that day I cooked up some burgers, and I think they tasted about 50% better on the newly cleaned grill ☺! If you need to clean up grease or grime off anything outdoors use Unique’s Grime Eater… it is excellent stuff! Plus it’s concentrated so you get more for your money.

I don’t know what factor changed this year but we have a HUGE number of ants around our house and garden. We started to panic because they started to make their way into our house. With all our pets, I needed a safe and natural product to keep them outdoors where they belong.  I remembered a little pamphlet I picked up at an Ace Hardware Green seminar, it is from www.ourwaterourworld.org.  It is a small pamphlet called “Pests Bugging You?” It offers several safe alternatives for ants, aphids, cockroaches, fleas, mealy bugs, mosquitoes, mites, snails and slug, whiteflies and yellow jackets. I am using the “Grant’s Kills Ants” outside.  To keep them from coming indoors, I have put a line of diatomaceous earth on all the thresholds. You can see them step on it, and then turn around. To us it looks like fine white powder, but to an ant it is razor-sharp little crystals. So far, it is keeping them out! Since we manufacture safe drain cleaners, safe holding tank treatment pet stain and odor removers I know that there are safer, easy ways to take care of these issues.  In the past I would have just grabbed the first thing I saw in the store to solve my problem, but now as I have become more educated on the whole green lifestyle, I try to find a safe solution. There really are great alternatives out there if you know where to look. My little pamphlet stays in my purse and goes to the stores with me.