I’ve been trying, without much luck, to find some green beauty products.  It is easy to find products that say they are green but hard to tell how green they actually are.  Right now, I use a lot of Aveda products, and Aveda does seem to be pretty environmentally responsible.  According to their website, they try to use natural ingredients including some organics and some of these ingredients are sourced from indigenous people and women’s cooperatives and other communities.  They also use wind energy in making their products.  Aveda has  a recycling program and uses recycled materials in their packaging.  They also raise money for environmental causes and breast cancer research.

As with all consumer products, it is hard to know how environmentally friendly a company really is.  But when a company does not test on animals, has an environmental sustainability policy, and whose mission is “to care for the world we live in, from the products we make to the ways in which we give back to society,” it does make me feel good about buying products from them.

The downside to buying products from Aveda is the expense.  The Be Curly shampoo and conditioner that I sometimes use runs you $21 for an 8.5 0z bottle.  They also still use many ingredients that are not natural or organic and some that may even be questionable for your health.  My sister recently showed me this website that rates cosmetic products based on how safe they are for you: http://www.cosmeticsdatabase.com.  They don’t have all of the Aveda products I use rated, but one I’ve used is rated a 5 out or 10 which is considered a “moderate hazard,”  due to one of it’s ingredients being linked to cancer and other things in lab tests.  Of course, it is hard to know how concerned to be about some of the lab tests that were done with animals, if an animal is pumped full of enough of any ingredient almost anything could cause cancer.  But it is still good to have a rating scale, and try to avoid products that are high hazards.

I will keep using Aveda products from time to time when I can afford them but will also be on the lookout for new and better environmentally friendly and healthy beauty products.  Please share any information you have about products you are currently using especially if they are environmentally friendly and work well!

I’m sunburned. My hands have blisters. My back is now a dull throb. And I haven’t felt better in a long time.

This weekend we worked our garden plot. Or it worked us. It’s hard to tell at this point. We started on Saturday morning trying to double dig the entire 20×20 plot. Double digging involves digging down a full spade/shovel length and then taking out all the dirt for an entire length of the plot and putting it in a wheelbarrow. Next you then loosen the subsoil that’s exposed with a garden fork (like a sturdy pitchfork). Then once the subsoil is loosened you move the dirt from the next row into the empty row, rinse and repeat. Once you get to the very end of the garden you fill in the last row with the dirt removed from the first row. It sounds pretty simple on paper so we bought a garden fork and some gloves and thought we were set.

Jake and I half way through raised beds

It turns out that our garden plot wasn’t really worked by anyone last year and has clay about 6-12 inches down that could double for some sort of asphalt or concrete mix. The double digging idea only lasted about an hour once I realized I had only done maybe 8 sq feet and there approx 392sq feet remaining.

Luckily, Tony, one of the other gardeners, stopped by to remind me that he does rototilling for only $40 per plot. That was the best money we’ve ever spent. We let him get to it and came back on Sunday to create the raised beds. We dug out a section 18 inches wide in between 3 foot beds. The idea is that you remove all the dirt from the walkways and pile it up on the beds where you’ll actually grow the vegetables. The raised beds give the vegetables a lot more room to grow roots as they have 1-1.5ft of loose soil to expand into without working too hard. The walkways allow you to easily access all the plants, pull weeds, etc without compacting the dirt that the plants grow in.

Completed raised beds

All looks good, except halfway through we found out that the reason everyone elses beds are running North – South is that the wind blows East – West. Our beds are running East – West. Oh well, we were too far down that path to change so we’ll see how our veggies do with the unique plot in the garden.