Category: soaps and lotions

Plastic-Free Organic Essence Lip Balm & Body Cream Give-Away

12/22/09:  Congratulations to the winners:   The Raven, Slee, Karen Sharkey, Alyssa, Maggie, and Tanya! The contest is closed.
I have another treat for you that I discovered at the San Francisco Green Festival last month: Organic Essence plastic-free cream and lip balm. As far as I know, Organic Essence is the first company to [...]

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Baking Soda: So Many Uses; So Little Money… and Plastic

I hear people bemoaning the high cost of “going green.”  And while organic food does cost more than its chemical-laden counterpart, I’m here to tell you that it’s easier to spend more for healthy food when you save money in other ways.  We can skip many of the green cleaners, deodorizers, and personal care products, [...]

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Liquid Soap Fail: What am I doin’ wrong?

This is a 1000 gram block of olive oil soap I bought from Body Time (a shop in my neighborhood) a while back. It was completely unpackaged. I thought I would use it to make liquid soap — to replace the Dr. Bronner’s we have been using for dishwashing once it’s gone. [...]

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Year 2, Week 12 Results: 1.0 oz of plastic waste. Plus questions about Sunscreen.

Just woke up from a long summer’s nap. Here’s the tally. But please stick around for a few questions afterward.
Plastic items used this week but purchased before the plastic project began:

2 filthy skanky disgusting synthetic sponges. I think I’ve gotten way more use out of them than they were ever meant to [...]

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Pure & Natural is just a name, not necessarily a description

My friend and co-worker Marika picked up a bar of Pure & Natural soap for me while shopping at Target. Marika is very sweet. She makes the best cupcakes and brownies in the world, and she lives to love and protect animals of all kinds (even though she tortures her dog by making [...]

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Lush responds, for what it’s worth

The letter-writing continues. After mentioning Lush solid shampoo and deodorant bars in my post two weeks ago, I received several comments from readers who had mail ordered Lush products hoping to avoid plastic packaging, only to find that the products that are sold “naked” in the store are packaged in all kinds of plastic [...]

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Update 3: Soap and Shampoo and Deodorant, oh my!

One of the best ways for us to eliminate unnecessary plastic is to eliminate the water. No water = no plastic bottle. The easiest step in that department is to switch from liquid hand soap and bath gels to solid bar soaps. But there are other products that many folks don’t realize [...]

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Hand lotion. Is it for the bees?

Have you ever wondered how honey is harvested from beehives? This fall, Michael and I got to find out firsthand while visiting our friends, Jerry and Mea, at Draper Farms in San Anselmo.

The hives are wooden frames with beeswax starter cells. The bees fill the cells with honey and, as each cell fills [...]

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Week 23 Results: 3.5 oz of plastic

Yay! The total weight’s back down again. But my plastic still doesn’t fit in the palm of my hand. Maybe this week coming up?
Before I get on with the tally, here is a PVC update and a local Deal Alert:
First, the PVC update: As you know, I found four bottles in [...]

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Store Report: Rainbow Grocery

I’ve mentioned Rainbow Grocery in quite a few posts, and now I’m going to explain it, so those folks who are not lucky enough to live in the SF Bay Area will know what I’m talking about. Rainbow Grocery makes me wish I still lived in San Francisco. There’s a certain familiar smell [...]

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