Green Options

I’ve long been a fan of ECOBAGS®, so I was excited to see their adorable natural Loofah Art scrubbers.

Loofah-Art® products are completely eco-friendly, 100% bio-degradable and fabricated from a sustanable agricultural crop. Natural scrubbers for your natural home. Delightful designs for your kitchen and bath. Did you know that Loofah is a plant? The loofah used in all of these whimsically designed scrubbers has been naturally grown and processed.

At only $3.99 for a pair of ECOBAGS® loofah scrubbers, these cuties are affordable.  Loofah is great for both the kitchen and personal care.  In the kitchen, loofah scrubbers clean stubborn pots and pans, but they are gentle enough to wash fruits and vegetables.  In the bathroom, loofah scrubbers exfoliate and encourage new cell growth.

In shocking news, the Canadian government has announced that two chemicals used in cosmetics are carcinogens that are severely harmful to human health. A further two chemicals found in lipstick and other personal care products have also been found to be highly toxic to the environment.

The two cancer-causing chemicals, isoprene and epichlorohydrin, have been added to the Cosmetic Ingredient Hotlist to prevent their future use in cosmetics. Health Canada is also proposing that manufacturers use best-available technology to control releases of isoprene.

The cosmetics chemicals posing a danger to the environment are the siloxanes D4 and D5, which are used as emollients to soften the skin and are found in most personal care products on the market in Canada and the United States.

Raffaele Ruberto founded Mod.Skin Labs, LLC in 2006. Two years is not long ago, yet seemingly perfect timing for a rather new awareness of conventional personal care product hazards. After all, the certification journey of organic foods was a battle in itself. The debate over whether skin care formulations could hold shelf-life with organic and natural ingredients followed.

Simran Sethi and Sarah Smarsh are writing a series on the impacts of everyday things. They will be posting previews on the Green Options Media blog network before launching the posts on Huffington Post. Here’s a sneak peek at what happens in the shower.

The magical cleaning agent in your bar of hygiene is likely cow fat or oil from, say, coconut. At the manufacturing plant, a chemical process removes the valuable glycerin in the fats and oils to be used in other products. The leftovers are mixed with sodium hydroxide and then blasted dry to form soap pellets, which are then mixed with the colorants, fragrances and other ingredients that allow a humble soap to go by the name of Carribean Breeze or Lilac Meadow.

While the production of soap—or anything, really—has environmental repercussions all its own, the pretty smells in our personal care products are, perhaps, the issue most worth examining here. Many of the chemicals producing fine aromas have been linked to not-so-fine human ailments or tested on animals, and their disposal—down your shower drain in a sudsy stream—fills our water system with chemicals that do not readily biodegrade (or breakdown).

Now, how about a shave?

Editor’s note: Deodorant may not be a prime topic for polite conversation, but we all use it. Our friends at Life Goggles tried out Bionsen’s product, which features Japanese spa minerals as materials (and we’re not sure what that means, either). Looks like this is a product mainly for European readers… any US-based users? This post was originally published on Wednesday, June 4, 2008. (and please note: Bionsen’s web presence is a bit funky… there is a site here, but it doesn’t seem to include this product).

Bionsen kindly sent me a bottle of its deodorant for me to test. Usually I’m a spray deodorant kind of guy but not being able to send aerosols through the post, I opted for the pump spray. At £2.49 it’s not unreasonable, although I tend to choose my spray by being on special offer so is probably a little more than I would pay normally.

I was also reticent about the pump spray and the fact it would be wetter on my underarms, but I’ll try anything so I plowed on. Bionsen is a hypoallergenic range containing Japanese spa minerals (whatever they are) and is aluminum and paraben free. There’s some science behind the deodorant, as instead of it blocking the sweat glands like anti-perspirants, Bionsen (and other deodorants) tackle the odor instead. The “antiseptic agents and germ-killing ingredients target and kill the bacteria that causes body odor on contact. Fragrances also work to combat body odor but the natural, finely-tuned balance of the body is not affected”.

As I wrote about back in January, the word, “Natural” essentially means “nothing”, as far as the FDA is concerned.

The FDA (has) declined to issue a regulation that would define use of the word “natural” on food and household product packaging in the near future, stating: we’re not sure how high an issue it is for consumers.

Well actually, according to a Yankelovich study commissioned by Burt’s Bee’s, 78% of consumers believed that “natural” claims ARE regulated. So, of course they are not concerned…the government’s on the case, right?

Nope.

“… a company might make a product that really is natural, and label it as such,” says Daniel Fabricant, VP/scientific and regulatory affairs at the Natural Products Association, Washington, D.C., “or it could be made of nine synthetic ingredients, with just a little plant extract thrown in.”

For those of you who travel to foreign cities for conferences, get all fired up throughout the day listening to inspiring talks, and seeing innovative ideas in action, yet then dread the retreat to the seclusion of your double-bed hotel room, don’t fear: an alternative is here. Not only is renting a hotel a pain in the rear, but I frequently experience buyers remorse due to how excessive a whole room to myself

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I once had someone suggest to me that environmentalists didn’t have enough fun. Granted, that person was a flame-throwing stilt walker, so her idea of fun might be a bit different from yours and mine. But the question remains: do environmentalists take themselves too seriously?

Now you may be shocked by this question. I was. I mean, if you can’t see the fun in trying to save the world from global warming and mass

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Dear Vital Juice Daily:

Any suggestions?

-Lucy K.

Have we got just the thing for you! In case you haven’t heard us talk about this already, Weleda Skin Food is hands down (pun intended) our favorite hand cream out there! First, it’s

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A few months ago, in an effort to green up my health and beauty products, I ran across National Geographic’s The Green Guide. The site included a handy wallet-sized guide called The Dirty Dozen in Personal Care Products, which allows me to pick products that don’t contain harmful chemicals.

Then last week, my issue of Whole Life Times included a tear-out seafood guide. It lets me know what to

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