The picture above includes one of my three cats. Her name is Mica, and she is the only one of the three of them who is always curious about most of my human activities (beyond feeding them, of course). When I laid out my Earth Day presents, Mica was the only one to come check them out.

Earth Day has often been a big day for me. This year, however, my public activism focus has been on the 50501 rallies–I’ve participated in 2 in the past month–that reject SO MANY of the current administration’s politicies. So while Earth Day is definitely included in that movement, I’m not as focused on that today as I usually am.

However, I did get myself? my family? my world? the Earth Day present shown above. It is a collections of eco-friendly home cleaning products that keeps my home healthy while also protecting the health of the planet.

Now, there are many eco-friendly cleaning items available, and I’ve used several of them. What makes this special is that these ones are being released by Good Store, a company founded by some of my current living heroes, Hank and John Green (I think Hank takes the lead in this project). Good Store is different in that its founders and directors receive NO MONEY for leading these efforts. Of course, they have to cover costs, but profits beyond that are donated to charity. In this case, the money goes to coral reef restoration in the Pacific Ocean. Good Store is special, to me at least, because I really trust in the integrity of these two men and their teams. If they say it is as ecologically safe as possible, I believe them.

When they came out with an announcement about opening this new business, I signed up immediately for their basic package. I think that was back in March. But when I came home yesterday, I saw their package waiting on my front door.

I knew my Earth Day present had arrived just in time.

If you aren’t familiar with eco-friendly products, I will explain. Most cleaning products are 90% water, encased in a single-use plastic container. With all that water, they are bulky and heavy and take a lot of energy to transport. Eco-friendly cleaning products remove the water, which reduces the cleaning ingredients to a small, light, solid mass. That requires less energy to transport, allows more environmentally-friendly packaging, and includes non-toxic ingredients.

So for several years now, I’ve been using the dried ingredients in my dishwasher and washing machine. It is lovely to just put small sheets or tablets of detergent into my machines instead of having to store large plastic bottles full of liquids. And the containers are paper and recyclable.

But, I will admit, what I haven’t done is to rid myself of plastic cleaning bottles. HOWEVER, that ends today My bundle included a refillable glass jar for cleaning fluid and a refillable glass jar for hand soap.

If you , too, want to invest into eco-friendly cleaning products that spend their profits on restoring coral reefs, please check out https://good.store/collections/ecogeek. If you aren’t interested in the products, but want to know more about this wonderful organization, please check out https://good.store/pages/good-store-about-us. Or maybe both!

This is a different kind of Earth Day for me. We adjust to our times and circumstances. But Mica sniffed it all out and gave it her approval, and that’s good enough for me. So let’s enjoy this celebration of Mother Earth in whatever way seems forwarding to our situation.