Current category: treehugger [return to main]

In my quest to go green, I've come across so much information that I almost wish I didn't know. How did I know that dying my hair monthly was increasing my chances for bladder cancer? That whenever I applied antipersperant under my arms or washed my hair I could've helped along breast cancer? That when I applied blush, I was actually blushing on talcum powder. My major complaint is that we as consumers just don't know enough. We're happily oblivious to the crap we smear on our faces or slosh in our hair or paint on our nails, that we're exposing ourselves to a variety of different toxins and carcinogens. And as a result, society ends up reacting rather than proacting.

With slowly replacing all of my hair and makeup (and nail) products with purely or almost purely natural products, my newest target is perfume. Some of you say you don't really wear makeup. Some of you don't use a lot of styling products. But I'm sure all of you at one point have worn colognes or perfumes or fragrance body creams or shower gels or or or... Well, again, we're not told when we buy the delicate little bottles that they are sometimes filled with nasty toxins, such as cyclohexanol, limonene, toluene, hexachlorophene, etc, etc. Sure you can say "well if it's out on the shelves, surely it hasn't killed anyone, I'm sure they wouldn't put anything out there too harmful to us." Can I remind you how dangerous it is to trust any corporation, whose main goal (of course) is to maximize profits at minimal cost? It may not be immediately dangerous to you if exposed to small quantities each day, but like cigarettes and its smoke, who knows what it can cause over years of exposure.

My biggest advice to all of you is to do your homework. I've come to be very suspect of products that don't have an ingredient list easily legible on their packaging. In a perfect world, we could actually get some governmental action mandating toxicity rating levels or alerts on all of our personal care. But as we don't have that, we have to use our brains to do the work. Or at least, check the toxicity of the products you do use. Different products (even by the same manufacturer) vary.

Without sounding yet again like a broken record, I decided to look into mixing together homemade perfumes. I've lately all but stopped using my traditional perfumes (okay, I'll save them for absolute absolute only special occasions) and started using essential oils and creams to smell good. But essential oils, as lovely as they are, don't last very long on the skin. And some can be a little irritating for the skin if used undiluted. So perfume making it is. And as I progress, I will blog about it. Because it's damn interesting. And I now have dreams of making my own "signature" scent.

It seems amazingly easy, actually. You have your collection of oils (make sure they're natural/essential too, some of those aromatherapy oils are no better than the bottles of perfume), your pure-grain alcohol (or vodka, I heard can be used), and distilled water. Oh, and time. You mix together oils, add alcohol, shake it like a martini, and let it sit for a good few weeks (maybe even a month,) because the longer it sits, the stronger it gets. And at the end you add distilled water and there you go, your magical homemade perfume, free of formaldehyde. I want to buy a nice sealable glass bottle, a couple eye-droppers, and of course the strongest purest alcohol I can find, and get to it. Maybe if I come up with something intresting, I could even send some to family / friends. And I'm excited about buying some beautifully lovely decorator perfume bottles, as well.

Have you noticed how expensive perfumes are at the stores? $60 for a tiny bottle of chemicals? Psha, my ass. If I'm going to dish out $60 for perfume, I want something that's not going to slowly kill me.

Hey, Cleopatra herself made her own fragrances. I can too.

I'm such a girl.

Okay, I've used my organic products for about a week and so far I'm pleasantly surprised by them. First off, I absolutely love my new Aubrey shampoo and conditioner. This is surprising because I was pretty spoiled with my Lush shampoo and conditioner. The Rosa Mosqueta shampoo smells wonderfully flowery and nice and has a rather nice lather to it for being chemical free, and my GPB conditioner is absolute heaven. It's soooo moisturizing. I rub it into the ends of my hair first and let it saturate there (tip from a hairdresser I know), before lathering the rest of the head. I've been randomly touching my hair all this week by how soft it is. I just want to ensure that neither product is drying out my scalp, so I'm keeping an eye on it. My teeth are nice and white, thanks to my new natural toothpaste. Of course, as I'm now without my fluoride treatment, I am trying to be good and brush at least 2-3 times daily. But so far it's looking good. Haven't used my Herbatint yet, but that will come soon enough. And I find my Alba hairspray to do its job fine and dandy. Have I mentioned how soft my hair has been lately? Especially when I rub a little Frederic Fekkai glossing cream in (which isn't fully natural, but not too bad). So far being green has been pleasantly effective. Which brings me to today.

I used the excuse of needing more milk, organic sweet potatoes, and Applewood smoked cheddar to head back to Whole Foods to get some more beauty products. And this week I got some really nice things. First and foremost, I was put off from using paraben-laden Imperialis (thanks but no thanks, Lush, that's a bit too close to my lips and eyes for my likes) and instead bought Burt's Bees' Carrot Nutritive Day Creme, which was on sale this week. And of course, with me being as impatient as I can be, I have already tested it. And first comments were... my god, my face smells like carrot cake. Truly, it has the carroty-spicy smell to it. And that's not a bad thing. It's lovely. Forget perfumes, I just need to apply my carrot creme every morning to smell good enough to eat. It's a light orangey color and is a lot thicker than I'm used to (Imperialis was watery next to this) but my face feels very soft and smooth. And c'mon... I smell like carrot cake. And I probably taste like it too ;) Just need the cream cheese frosting.

While I'm still discussing Burt's Bees, I...err.. well Sim bought their Cinna Mint toothpaste.. not sure really why he hasn't used mine this week, but decided today that he likes Dr Burt. So we've gotten another natural toothpaste... and of course, me being the experimenter in this project, I have already tried it this afternoon. It's definitely thicker than the Nature's Gate toothpaste I used. Likely because of the presence of bentonite clay in it, which I hear is good for polishing the teeth. It has a much more cinnamon minty burst, same color paste as my Nature's Gate not-so-pretty greenish paste. I fully intend to alternate the two pastes this next week to decide which I like best.

Next up, a replacement for my Oxy facial cleansing pads... now I know it's best to use a facial cleanser each night before bed rather than all those silly little pads... but I like how non-messy it is using the facial pads to clean my face. Anyway Oxy pads have all sorts of strange chemicals in them, so I was squealing happily when I saw that Desert Essence makes a product to suit me well. I got their Green Tea facial cleansing pads to try out. I also bought some new soap, honey almond "river friendly" shea butter soap by Mountain Sky, locally made here in the beautiful British Columbia. It was on sale ;) I haven't yet used it, but I am loving the sweet honey & almond scent it smells like. Good enough to eat, and probably natural enough to do so ;)

Then, I had to treat myself to a couple of things... since I read that nailpolish and remover are some of the most harmful chemicals that we expose ourselves to, I wanted to clean out my nailpolish collection too, and replace them also with water-based non-acetate non harmful counterpart... and so I bought a bottle of No-Miss's "Almost Natural Polish Remover". I also bought a bottle of Suncoat's water-based nail polish in its "cotton candy" colour. What I find impressive is that it's 99% stink-free! Lastly, wearing less of the chemical-rich eau de parfums that I have in my collection, I bought myself a tiny little vial of jasmine essential oil, mostly because the scent reminds me of wearing jasmine flowers in my hair in India and also because it's known to be a natural aphrodesiac ;) Now I can smell soft and delicate while at the same time not worrying that I'm feeding my body a dose of carginogens.

Anyway that's it for now.... more will come as I receive my sample order of mineral makeup from Monave.

Okay, in my quest to go green, I managed to get out to Whole Foods today and I bought a few items.



First, to replace my nasty Garnier Nutrisse permanent haircolor, I bought the Italian-made Herbatint in light ash chestnut color (5C). Being that it also is permanent dye, it also has the dreaded phenylenediamine, but in much lower quantities than what I had in my Garnier dye, and /no/ Ammonia, which is very nice. I was trying to decide between that and NaturColor, but the Herbatint was on sale so that's what I went with.



Second, I bought some new shampoo and conditioner free of parabens and sodium lauryl sulfate. I had been using Lush's luxurious (cry) Rehab shampoo and American Cream conditioner and have loved it, but was sickened when I realized that Lush wasn't so nature-loving afterall. It's not like the products aren't fantastic, I just don't think I should have to spend $30 on a shampoo to find (not-so-safe) synthetics in it. If Aubrey can do it without the parabens, why can't Lush? And yes, I fully plan to send them a long letter about just that. Maybe if they get enough complaints, they will do something about their use of these potential toxins.

So I went with Aubrey Organics' Rosa Mosqueta shampoo and GPB conditioner. I've heard raves about the GPB conditioner, and as I do color-treat my hair, I got Rosa Mosqueta- which is self-claiming good for just that. As for styling, I bought Alba's medium-hold hair spray. No real research or science behind my decision, other than it's a safer product than the I-C-E hair spray I have been using and it was on sale.



And not wanting to spend that much more on me today, I bought a tube of Nature's Gate Green Tea Toothpaste to replace my scary Aquafresh brand. No fluoride, baby! It's the one product I have already tried, and although it has a weird consistency and definitely looks green-tea colored, it smells very minty and works fine. My teeth feel clean to the touch.

So I'll be trying out my products in the next days and if there is something I absolutely madly love or hate, I will likely report it. Because it might just help if any of you are looking to go green also.

I was going to try out some makeup, but I'm holding off on that for the time being. I ordered some various mineral makeup samples from Monave that is supposed to revolutionize the foundation world (and imagine wearing makeup that helps to alleviate acne, not cause it! Ahhh!) I might look to get some lipstick and mascara in the meantime, but I'm holding off on foundation, blush, and eyeshadow til I get my order in the mail.

**

Sue's birthday tonight, so we're going to be heading downtown to meet for dinner. Has been an absolutely glorious (but cold) day. We really must've brought the sunshine back from Barbados, because it has hardly rained at all since we've returned. I'm pleased by that.

Have a great Saturday, everyone!

I should be asleep but eh, not in the mood just yet.

These last couple days I've been rather interested obsessed about making myself greener, in general. After spending a week with Sim's organics-loving cousin, Emma, I learned a lot about the crap we expose ourselves to day after day in order to be beautiful and clean. We did some talking about the parabens, sulfates, etc. that's found in everyday products. It's left me examining my product labels with horror and feeling generally nauseous by how much I'm exposed to even when I thought myself so environmentally sound simply just getting off anti-persperants.

Do you realize that many cancer victims have been found to have parabens in their systems? Parabens... found in most deoderants, shampoos, lotions, creams. Chemical preservative. Ugh! And that paraphenylenediamine (PPD) which you can find in most hair dyes can be carcinogenic over time? And although as-yet unproven, sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), which acts as a detergent in many products, may over time do all sorts of nasty stuff to your body? Of course, there are no conclusive evidence of this. But I don't necessarily always wait for the FDA to tell me what's safe for me and what's not. If I can get by without it, then what would stop me? I'm making the switch to another safer alternative. Using products that contain mostly natural oils and extracts just feels better. Even if it's more smelly or less effective. I don't care. And besides, what a good reason to clean out the countless eye shadows and blushes and mascaras and lipsticks that are clogging up my makeup case.

Thankfully, I live within a short distance from the only Whole Foods in all of British Columbia, which (although expensive) can hook me up with alternatives for my shampoos, hairsprays, hair dyes, toothpastes, cosmetics, and so on. I almost want to chuck all of my makeup and get new organic counterparts. But that's going to hurt the pocketbook a little too much- especially this close to tax season.

Of course, the web keeps me piggy-backing off from site after site until I find myself looking into all-natural feminine hygeine products, homeopathy, natural and non-toxic perfume oils, manual juicers, and fair-trade bamboo bowls. It's making me a little green-crazy. I might need an intervention soon. But not until I bookmark my new favorite community blog, treehugger.com.