This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 22, 2011 - Many St. Louisans will be looking to do some serious bargain hunting over the next month. What kind of unique item can you get for the man or woman on your gift list who has everything?
If the answer is organic lollipops or a composting toilet, then Terry Winkelman and Phil Judd have exactly what you are looking for.
"We used to have to send out a press release explaining what a green store was and what sustainability even meant. Now, they have whole cable programs on green," said Winkelman. "There's a lot more understanding."
Winkelman and Judd run Home Eco, a south St. Louis retail business they founded six years ago that specializes in environmentally friendly products from housewares to cleaning supplies to flooring. She was inspired to create the for-profit enterprise from her own experiences.
"There's been a lot of cancer in my family, and I think there's a lot of toxicity in a lot of products," Winkelman said. "It may be OK according to the FDA if you have it in 1 percent of 10 products. But if you have it in everything, I think eventually you build critical mass. I think we need to be more aware of what's in everything: our paint, our flooring is off gassing into our homes every minute of every day."
But she also saw a market niche. Home Eco was filling a need the big box stores weren't.
"People who were aware of it had only one resource," she said. "That was the internet. So we thought we'd be that resource."
The 2,200-square-foot store at 4611 Macklind houses an extensive home and garden section boasting a large selection of composters and rain barrels that Judd said few others in the area carried until recently.
"They still don't have any this good," he smiled.
There are also pet-safe insecticides and repellents made from diatomaceous earth and natural oils of clove, cinnamon, peppermint and sesame. Organic lotions and soaps are on offer as well as toilet cleansers that feature cedar oil instead bleach. Even petroleum-free candles are available.
"All the candles we have are either soy or beeswax," Judd said. "Some of them have essential oils in them."
"These are actually made in a solar-powered shop, which is very cool," he added.
The store seems to challenge a lot of the assumptions that commercials have made a part of the culture. For one thing, there's the idea that cleaners should disinfect.
"You don't want to kill germs. You want to remove them," said Judd. "If you just kill germs, you make them stronger. Every time you put stuff on that kills them, they get more resistant."
Another assumption is that you should simply buy another bottle of cleanser. In fact, Home Eco is happy for you to purchase a refill using the bottle you have.
There are also a wide variety of kitchen compost pails, laundry drying racks, water bottles, coconut-based cleaners and even eco-friendly bamboo utensil sets, which encourage buyers to "reduce your forkprint."
Recycling is an ever present theme. Shoppers can find hats made from repurposed truck tarps, stuffed animals derived from used sweaters and toy cars that were milk jugs in a former life. Even the covers of the recycled paper journals are a stroll down memory lane for technophiles, being made of old 10-inch floppy computer disks.
Then there's the other sort of recycling that brings one to the composting toilet, a plumbing free device that allows users to add a scoop of microbes and some straw or chopped up wheat, turn a crank and later remove the compartmentalized remains for disposal in the yard.
"You put it back into the earth and haven't used any water or wasted any materials that are better used elsewhere," Winkelman said.
Flooring is available as well, including cork, sustainably managed Missouri hardwood, bamboo and linoleum.
Yes, linoleum.
"A lot of people don't realize that linoleum is not vinyl," Winkelman said. "It's made from linseed oil, not petrochemicals. One of the keys to being green is to eliminate as much petrochemical as you can from products in your household."
Local products and domestic sources feature prominently at Home Eco, partly because they like purchasing closer to home but also because of sound philosophical reasons.
"One of the things we do is try to get as much American-made products as possible," Judd said, "so even though cheaper stuff can be had, a lot of our stuff is domestic which lightens the transportation load."
The last three years have not been any kinder to Home Eco than to any other retailers, but Winkelman sees the glass half full.
"We're still in business," she said. "People who have been open a hundred years are closing up shop."
She has seen the market expand significantly over the years.
"As awareness is growing and people are requesting it, more companies that are in the (home repair and hardware) business -- the paint retailer, the flooring retailer -- they have a (green) buyer now," she said. "It may only be 10 percent of their market but they have a buyer now, so they are going out and carrying some of the products."
In the end, she thinks the market segment is there.
"I think if there is a future for retail and manufacturing, it's going to be green products," said Winkelman. "I think that's the future to jobs in this country but we're in a transition phase. We're hitting the rapids right now and everybody's unsure of where the jobs are and how much money they can spend. I don't think that's a reflection on the green market specifically as on the economy in general."
David Baugher is a freelance writer. NOTE: Home Eco closed in 2013.