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For an incredibly simple way to cut down your shower time, water consumption, and product use, all you have to do is… cut your hair! I recently had easily over a foot of hair cut off and was amazed at the immediate changes in my morning routine. It’s fast, easy, and cool for the summertime. But I’m one of those girls with no emotional attachment to my hair (plus, I think the androgynous/boyish look is completely adorable). To the rest of you–it’s worth it to save the world, right??
See, it's not too hard, right?
And here are a few things that have caught my eye recently (or not so recently):
An encouraging post from Barbara at Tigers & Strawberries about Americans returning to the garden.
Two from No-Impact Man, Colin Beavan: A 90-second video from 350.org and a summary of Al Gore’s recent call for the US to move to 100% renewable energy by 2018.
This book looks amazing… and I want it. Badly.
So this scarf isn’t exactly new, but I LOVE it. Too bad my knitting skills are right about here and I have finished exactly one scarf in my life… maybe someday I will actually learn to do basic things like read the pattern for that scarf. We’ll see.
These look amazing… see: 
I told you.
This resource for finding local food producers looks very helpful… and kind of like something I was thinking about doing for my honors thesis… if I ever learn flash. I’ll probably explain that more later.
Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy looks like a book worth reading. I’ll have to add it to my list.
An interview on Grist with the author of another book that looks worth reading: Bottlemania.
So, it’s not quite as serious as alcoholism, but using shampoo and conditioner creates waste and may introduce you to icky toxins, like the paraben family (good info from Allie’s (Green) Answers here and here). So in an effort to reduce my plastic waste and toxin-absorption, I’ve cut them out of my morning routine (along with lotion and face wash).
Rebecca over at The Herbwife’s Kitchen recommends making the change gradually in her wonderfully informative post here. I’m really bad at waiting though, and as I already had pretty limited shampoo/conditioner usage, I cut it out straightaway (I was using a Suave shampoo and Herbal Essences conditioner, with showers ever 2 or 3 days) and went for a glycerin-based soap. Enter: Pacifica’s Nerola Orange Blossom, part of a three pack of soaps my mom had given to me as a gift but I never got around to using.
First of all, it smells heavenly. Secondly, it is made of all natural ingredients–no animal products or testing. And thirdly, it is packaged in the tiniest little bit of thin plastic around the bar of soap, which is kind of unnecessary with the adorable paper packaging they have, but at least it’s only a little bit, right? Anyway, I love the stuff, and I started just working the soap into my hair right from the bar. It does the job pretty well, though I did have a few borderline-greasy days at the beginning. The Most Exciting Part though, is that my hair, which has always been somewhere in between wavy and straight, air-dried into the most luscious waves with no help whatsoever! It’s a beautiful thing.
Recently, I’ve started using a baking soda solution (I don’t have any measurements here… I just put about a teaspoon of soda into a small bottle and fill the rest up with hot water and mix). The only issue I’ve had with the baking soda is rinsing it all out. Sometimes I’ll catch tiny little grains of the stuff in my hair after I get out of the shower and have to rub it out with a towel. I still need to try the natural bristle brush, herbal rinses, and apple cider vinegar that Rebecca mentions in the post above, but so far, I’m really liking this transition away from your everyday shampoo and conditioner. The hardest part of the whole deal has been not having that slick, smooth hair that conditioner gives you–without it, I hate running my fingers through my wet hair, but I just towel dry it, and just let it sit while I get ready, and it does it’s own thing. And that is amazing. I was wondering how I would reconcile having to use either styling products or a blow dryer (using electricity) with the whole waste-reduction aspect of this little experiment, but I’m finding that I don’t need to interfere with the natural state of things too much anymore.
And I have a feeling that a post on the wonderousness of baking soda is coming soon, so get ready!
Oh, and I just have to share this… I met two of my most favoritest musicians EVER. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova! Beautiful, kind people.
I like my job, I really do. And I love the grocery store where I work–I miss it when I leave for college each fall, and throughout the school year. But after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which I mentioned in the last post, I just can’t look at my lovely grocery store in the same way. It’s the end-result of the monster of industrial agriculture.
Yes, it still has it’s positive aspects–the best produce in town (of the large chain stores, of course, the farmer’s market is a bajillion times better), an extensive health food section for your average grocery store, and Chinese food that will make you ridiculously fat and happy. If you read the previous post, you might guess that most of that glorious Chinese food is off limits now, and it is. But I had the lone vegetarian dish–vegetable lo mein–during my break today, and have decided that it will be my unhealthy treat for when my arteries need a good clogging. Oh, and for all of you plastic-phobes out there, dining in the grocery store’s seating area means eating on a real plate, with real silverware! The only shortfall is the styrofoam cup, but that’s my own fault for forgetting my water bottle.
Then there’s the dark side, when you move away from the naked produce smiling happily up at you and into any other part of the store. It’s all covered in PLASTIC. Even the bulk bins are accompanied by little environment-killing bags on a roll. And when you move away from the edges of the store, everything is not only ensconced in plastic, it’s all PROCESSED too. It’s evil to the core! And for hours on end, I stand at a register, happily asking “Would you like paper or plastic, today?” ringing up all of this food. I always hope they ask for paper–I’ve heard most of it’s made from recycled paper, but I don’t know the specs on my bags–and I always smile when they say, “No thanks, I’ve brought my own bags,” and I get to give them a $.05/bag credit. Then I fill those reusable bags with countless little bags of plastic. And it makes me sad all over again.
The worst part of it is that what’s inside those plastic bags is indirectly derived from petroleum (unless it’s organic). It probably has at least one of the many products derived from corn, such as high-fructose corn syrup, and that corn is grown using fertilizers made from petroleum. So we’re eating food grown with petroleum that has been wrapped in a product made from petroleum, all while we’re running out of oil and complaining about high gas prices. Oh, Lord.
