At Seventh Generation, much of our thinking about the environment is based on the Precautionary Principle, an environmental philosophy created at a landmark 1998 conference of scientists, government officials, lawyers, labor activists, and environmental leaders at Wingspread in Racine, Wisconsin.

The Principle offers a common-sense approach to environmental dilemmas and is based on a simple statement:

“When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

This is a revolutionary idea, because when it comes to environmental issues, our regulatory system is based on the philosophy that most activities, whether cutting down a tree or selling a certain product, should be considered okay until proven otherwise.

The Precautionary Principle, on the other hand, says that we should first prove an activity is safe before we engage in it. If we can’t erase doubt, the product or action should not proceed.

Many of the suggestions and ideas you’ll find on our website are similarly precautionary in nature. It is our fundamental belief that we just don’t know enough about many of the chemicals and products that surround us to continue using them. Until we know for sure that a chemical is safe, we’re not going to recommend using it.

So when we say, for example, that no conventional chemical cleaning products should be used in your home, we’re not saying that every single one of these products is dangerous. We’re saying that we don’t know which are and which aren’t. Because we suspect that many of them might be, we think it’s wise to err on the side of caution and keep them out of our lives until solid proof of each product’s safety can be provided. The stakes are just too high for us to adopt any other approach.

In the end, it’s far easier and a whole lot safer to simply snuff out a match, or never even light it at all, than it is to extinguish the forest fire it can start. That’s why we teach our children not to play with fire. The Precautionary Principle seeks to remind us grown-ups that the lesson still applies.

photo: Northland Poster Collective