Everything good that could happen happened. So life cannot get any better than that.

So much has happened. 

Okay, first of all, Ana, my fiance and love of my life and mother of my children, comes to mind, and, of course, the kids.  Especially because we're getting married this week.  Yes, it is true.  Makes me happy.

Another thing that makes me happy:  Earth Friendly Products. 

I just had an amazing opportunity to talk about Earth Friendly Products on two separate days.  I love talking about them.  How can you not if you are a patriot?  How can you not if you are a caring individual who is striving to do things better?  How can you not if you believe in the American dream?  It is one of the most amazing stories I have come across.  I love hearing great stories.  I love writing about them.  I love writing about the amazing people in my life.  I have to count Earth Friendly Products as perhaps the most amazing natural products company today--certainly in the fast growth green household cleaning products category. 

There's nothing like it.  It's an amazing business model that probably has years of capturing more and more market share while making the Earth a better place and leaving it in better shape than ever before.  I heard Ronnie Cummins speaking too at the press conference he and I held in Anaheim, California, to coincide with the Natural Products Expo on May 12, and Ronnie, who is director of the Organic Consumers Association, explained to a spellbound audience that what we pour down the drain does not just disappear.  It goes someplace, including 1,4-dioxane, the poison du jour, into our sewage plants where it is nearly impossible to degrade and then into water to be used for recycling purposes--or into the sewage sludge California farmers are spreading on their crop fields for your culinary delight.  Anyway with this in mind here you a company like Earth Friendly Products which we tested and found to be absolutely free from any dioxane, which is in delightful contrast to say Tide from Procter & Gamble that tested at 55 parts per million (the highest in our study).  So in other words, what products do I want in my home?  And the Earth Friendly Products laundry detergent called ECOS is also completely free of some of the other commonly found chemicals like formaldehyde or quaternium compounds--and something else I learned is that it is pH neutral--a bit difference from the other products.  I mean most of the other products--including the natural ones--had pHs around the same alkalinity as bleach!  "Don't touch it," Van Vlahakis told me during the tour of the Earth Products facilities that I spoke at, following the press conference.  "It's too toxic."  He used one of the simplest tests in the world to shock the room.

Okay, let me back up for a second.  I held the press conference on May 12 at 9 AM and on May 13 at 4 PM I was scheduled to speak  on behalf of Earth Friendly Products at its Garden Grove, California, facilities where the company was hosting some 85 retailers who had come to the Expo and were going on a tour of what is certainly the most advanced green manufacturing plant in California.  (It was an amazing tour.)  I've written about the company's plants where here in Califronia they produce virtually all of their own energy from their own solar array and how in Illinois their plant there has the largest private solar array in the state.

Part of the tour was this amazing demonstration that Van put on.  I mean, we got some excellent background here.  He used a very simple analytical tool to measure the pH of each product.  It blew me away to see what a difference there was--and then to understand why this is important is also critically important.  You see, very caustic water causes additional treatment costs and sometimes water is so caustic it cannot be treated and cannot be used for even for watering golf courses and other agriculture or industry.  Well, in the drought-plagued Southwest, we're going to be recycling almost all our sewage water, I hate to tell you, in order to replenish groundwater supplies.  Hey, it is happening right now in the Big OC where one of the most sophisticated groundwater recharging systems is implemented.  Detergents' phosphate and sodium salts are a leading contributor to inorganic pollution.  Combine these highly alkaline salts with high causticity and all of the above are a recipe for wasted waters.  Again, the analysis, as simple as it might seem, was so graphically insightful.

There were stark differences even among these great brands.  Seventh Generation, Palmolive Eco and Biokleen all had much higher pH levels--in the range of sodium hypochlorite or bleach--while only Wave from Earth Friendly Products was pH neutral.  I saw the results.  I could not tell you these things if they were not true.  But things worsened with some of the more well known products.  Cascade had a pH nearly 12.

pH and causticity--two more reasons why for my home and my family Earth Friendly Products is number one.  Visit them at www.ecos.com.