Shoppin' for some bio*life

Here's the quandary ...

In spite of it's red-white-and-blue-ness, Shoppers Drug Mart is a Canadian company, one of our largest chains at 1,055 shops. And as such, it's likely that their products end up in most Canadian homes. Personally, I've tried to resist the call of this lumbering siren by shopping at our own very successful, local, small town pharmacy, Yurek's, which has been around since 1963, only one year less than Shoppers. But there are times when I seem to need acres of stuff to choose from to remind me that, in reality, my needs are quite simple.

One enterprise a Super Pharmacy can undertake that an independent cannot is to brand their own product, which is why we have Life Brand and more recently bio*life. And it was the promise of bio*life which drew me back into Shoppers; finally an environmentally sensitive product truly available to the masses, 'cause there is nothing that says "destroying the planet for no good reason" more than clear-cutting ancient growth forest to make toilet paper! Thanks Kimberly-Clark.

But it's kinda weird how I can't find any information about bio*life, no matter what search engine, and even Shoppers own website will not provide any results.

My spidey senses are tingling.

In December I sent an email to Shoppers asking for a bit more information;

Thank you so much for your Bio*Life product line! Up to now, I have been buying my recycled paper products at Whole Foods in Toronto and can now shop more frequently at Shoppers (much more convenient and a better price!)

I have been unable to learn more about your product line - there doesn't seem to be any information on the internet. Could I have some more information about the Bio*Life paper products such as; is the paper from Canada? Is the toilet tissue made in Canada or is the product just assembled / packaged here? Thank you for your help!

to which I received a friendly, informative response;

Hello,

Thank you for writing us and for your interest in our Bio Life products. Regrettably, we are unable to provide detailed manufacturer information on the Bio Life products because it is proprietary information.

Please do not hesitate to contact the Customer Service Call Centre at 1-800-SHOPPERs should you have any further questions or comments or require immediate assistance. Regards,Trevor, Customer Service

Fair enough Trevor, it's none of my business. But I did have further questions, prompted by their constant promotion (thanks for the invitation Shoppers);

Dear Shoppers Drug Mart
It was a very good day when I received a Shopper’s Drug flyer some months ago and saw the announcement of your bio*life products. Suddenly folks had a couple less reasons not to buy green – not only are the prices very good, but most everyone has access to a Shoppers!

My question is this; will Shoppers be eliminating the products from their own brand which compete with the bio*life items? Since bio*life is “tough on dirt, easy on the environment”, what does that say about your Life Brand equivalents?

Shoppers Drug Mart seems genuine in wanting to provide Canadians with healthier products, not just because it is a growing market. And so, it seems to me, now that you have your own environmentally friendly products that you should discontinue what would now be considered your own environmentally unfriendly products, which compete with your own line.I look forward to many more bio*life products! Thank you, Neil Hubert

to which I received a friendly, informative response;

Hello Neil,
Thank you for your E-mail complimenting our Bio Life products. It is always a pleasure to receive such positive feedback from our customers. Our promise is to provide superior customer satisfaction beyond expectation.

At this time, we do not have any current plans to discontinue our other Life Brand household cleaning products, however your comments will be forwarded to our Corporate Brands Department for future consideration.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to share your comment with us and please do not hesitate to contact the Customer Service Call Centre at 1-800-SHOPPERs should you have any additional comments or concerns.

Regards, Angela, Shoppers Drug Mart/Pharmaprix Customer Service

Well Angela, blah, blah, blah - it feels like just another grab for my "green" dollar, a dollar which I was going out of my way to hand over.

Since the bio*life toilet paper carries the Ecologo and yet, oddly, bio*life and/or Life brand is not listed on the Ecologo website, in February I contacted Ecologo, our federal program which "is a tool to find, understand, and trust genuinely “green” products";

Good morning.
I’ve been on your EcoLogo website for a couple of days attempting to answer my own questions but find I cannot find the information I am looking for, so must ask for your help. I recently purchased Shoppers Drug Mart bio*life bathroom tissue. The package features your EcoLogo and claims to be made from “100% post consumer paper deflected from landfill”. When I asked for confirmation of this from Shoppers, they responded with “Regrettably, we are unable to provide detailed manufacturer information on the Bio Life products because it is proprietary information”. I now find that they are not listed on your website under Certified Green Products or Participating Companies. Can you please confirm that they are entitled to display the EcoLogo and are satisfying your certification requirements? Thank you for your time, Regards Neil Hubert

This time I received no response at all - not even a ping-back indicating they'd received my inquiry. So I sent it again and on April 15th I received this response;

Neil

Thank you for the email, I had not received your previous attempt and apologize for the seemingly lack of response. We are currently looking into the Bio-life brand and will let you know if it is a misuse or not upon further investigation.
Best,
Sales & Marketing Coordinator TerraChoice Environmental Marketing

While all of this was going on, something very nice happened; I received a Canadian Tire flyer with an ad for Cascades Enviro toilet paper.

Now, I'm familiar with Cascades, and their Enviro line from having purchased it at Whole Foods in Toronto. Not only is Cascades a Canadian company, they are proud of their environmental achievements and there is endless chat and stats to be found on their corporate website, and their simplegreenaction sub-site.

Their products carry several certification logos and a facts chart listing;
100% recycled content, majority post-consumer
0% Virgin fibre
0% chlorine bleaching
80% water saved
100% hypoallergenic
and even the packaging is made of recycled material.

And though I'm no fan of Canadian Tire, thanks largely to the thugs our local store is staffed with, I am very pleased they are offering this Cascade product, and at a very good price of $5.99 for 24 double rolls. I've also seen it at A&P supermarkets.
Cascades also make other 100% recycled paper products such as paper towel, facial tissue, napkins and copy/printer paper.

So, our excuses not to make healthier environmental choices are sinking away, like squares of toilet paper flushed down the crapper, pardon the product tie-in.

Now if only Yurek's would stock Cascades Enviro and our local stationer would stock their 100% recycled paper .... next emails

How we use our water -pt 2

Our bathroom is, by far, the smallest room in the house. It is also the room we've got the most plans for, and the room we've already done the most work to.

First up, though there's a nice window in the room (overlooking a brilliant red Sand Cherry bush), we decided we needed an extractor fan in the ceiling. For us, the key to a successful renovation is to remain calm and not turn into The Bickersons. A four hour job can become a two day job (the light switch which has to incorporate a fan switch has wiring that needs updating). The fact that our house doesn't have soffits deep enough to accommodate the exhaust vent was a challenge that forced us to work creatively, and we solved the problem with a minimum of stress (and three trips to Home Hardware). With the fan installed, I had to patch the area surrounding the new switch plate as some plaster had been removed and a teeny-weeny-woony bit of wallpaper was torn. To make a long story short - most of the wallpaper has been removed following my botched patch-job and we're deciding on a colour to paint the walls.

The room has an assortment of kinda matching greens, one of which has now been removed. We are stuck with the khaki-green clover and the veins of forest green in the tile, and the khaki- brown marbling the vanity, which we will shift. I'm thinking a warm, bees-wax colour, roughly applied to look a bit moody. We'll see.
We're also still deciding on a replacement toilet. Our current museum piece takes three flushes to "do the job" and we've plans to install a high efficiency, low flush model, installed parallel to the sink (to allow for legroom with is currently missing). In the meantime, in the October issue of Real Simple magazine, in the "double duty household items" column, there was a suggestion on how to reduce the amount of water your toilet uses to operate. The magazine suggested filling plastic pop bottles with water and placing them in the tank so that, following a flush, the toilet would require less water to fill. I took this a step further and popped two bricks in the tank (the pop bottles seemed to want to move around) and thereby reduced the amount of water used for each flush by 3L!
And, further to my "potty" talk, we've managed to find a 100% recycled toilet paper that is .... get this ... affordable. Recently while at Whole Foods Market, the store everyone seems to love to hate, we purchased Cascades 24 roll toilet paper for $7.99 (33 cents per roll). It's always seemed irresponsible to me that we need to destroy so much land and wildlife in order to convert ancient growth trees into a product we, to be honest, could use leaves to do.