All Rileyed Up

Green Works – It Works

I recently sampled Clorox Green works laundry detergent and spray on stain remover on behalf of MomCentral. It smells delightful and cleans everything I throw at it, including but not limited to, mud, grass, spaghetti sauce, markers, hard candy bits, a mushed piece of something that may or may have not been on the foor, something green that may or may not have come out of someone’s nose, all variety of juices, and oh, whatever else exists in this world that has color. Can you tell I have children in the house?

Here is my latest tale of laundry woe:

Yesterday at school, the children put on a dance performance. School ended at 3pm, then they were going to have a pizza and fruit punch party and play around until the actual performance, which took place at 6pm.

The requested outfits of all students were a white shirt and blue jeans.

So, to be clear: white shirt and blue jeans AND pizza party and red fruit punch.

The teachers were wise enough to add to the notice – do not send your child to school DRESSED for the show, just put the white shirt in their backpack.

The Boy and Little No Limit were among the lucky few (and by few, I mean half), who had spots of red fruit punch and other such stains on their clothes, which made me very happy that I packed their brand new white shirts in their backpacks. I specify they were brand new because the only kinds of white clothing we own are brand new. White doesn’t last very long in our house.

So we got them dressed up in their dazzling white shirts, they did they dance thing (sooooo cute, but my Flip decided to freeze up so I couldn’t tape it. Soooooo lame).

After the dance, the kids were rewarded with a piece of chocolate cake.

And now, I have no brand new white shirts.

Ah, children. They should spend their allowance buying stock in Green Works.

***

I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Clorox Green Works and received a bottle of Green Works Natural Detergent and Stain Remover to facilitate my review and a $20 thank-you gift certificate.

So Clorox just came out with another addition to their Green Works product line, natural biodegradable cleaning wipes. They clean up everything, even wet dog prints.

Oh you had to go and bring that up!

They also smell lovely, unlike wet dog.

Enough with the insults!

Green Works has gotten the seal of approval from the Sierra Club for its products, but for those of you who require more impressive approbation, everyone’s favorite 90210 star, Jennie Garth AKA Kelly Taylor, also supports Clorox Green Works and encourages the use of reusable bags:

Big enough to carry certain wet dogs.

Lastly, and most excitingly, Clorox Green Works has rolled out the Green Heroes Grant Program, which will award five $10,000 grants each to eco-friendly community projects. From January 15 and February 28, 2009, you can nominate eco-friendly community projects for a Green Heroes grant by submitting a photo and short essay about the project for consideration. From March 16 through April 10, 2009, public voting will take place online and the five Green Heroes will be announced on April 22, Earth Day. I hope there’s a group out there doing something about wet dogs…

How about the animal rescue where you got me?

I was happy to sign up for the Clorox Green Works blog tour through Mom Central because I just LOVE washing my dishes.

Oops. You weren’t supposed to see that.

I signed on for the Clorox Green Works tour because I was curious if it worked as well as Seventh Generation, a company and product I love.

Clorox Green Works does actually work well. I don’t have to use as much of it as I have to use of Seventh Generation’s detergent, and it’s easier to get. Good for Clorox for coming out with Green Works. However, Clorox still churns out its chemical-laden products too, which makes them look like they’re just jumping on the green bandwagon, an exact concern they address in their FAQ’s on their website: “We’ve been working on natural products for the past 5 years. We set ourselves a difficult task–to set the standard for natural cleaning and create products that clean with the power you expect from Clorox. In fact, we delayed Green Works™ products from hitting the shelves by 6 months to further perfect the formula. We are fully committed to continuing to develop natural products that continue to set the standard for natural.”

What would be really great would be if Clorox phased out their other products in favor of only selling their Green Works products. Think it’ll happen?

Yeah. Me neither. Let’s just focus on baby steps. I have a nicely scented dish detergent that works well and can be purchased at the local grocery store, so the next time you’re buying detergent, give Clorox Green Works a shot instead of Dawn or Palmolive. And if you already buy Clorox products, try only buying their Green Works ones. Give them a reason to, shall we say, get greener.