Environmental Enlightenment #17 (Giving Green Gifts)

I'm making an effort to make ALL aspects of my life more environmentally friendly and this includes giving gifts. The goal is to be able to a) find something the person will like and b) have it be in line with my environmental values. Another part of giving green gifts involves the wrapping paper. This past Christmas 2010 I "knot wrapped" all of my Christmas gifts in order to avoid wasting wrapping paper. I discovered "knot wrapping" at Lush (they will "knot wrap" gifts in the store when asked) which is based on the Japanese tradition of Furoshiki. 

Environmental Enlightenment #10 (Natural Bath Products)

I promised a post in which I would share my love of Lush products and here it is! I'd like to start out by saying that I haven't used many of their products, but the ones that I have used I love. Lush has a wide selection of bath bombs. I enjoy a soak in the tub a couple times a month so I decided to try two of them out. My favorite was the French Kiss Bubble Bar.

I have a soft spot for Lavender. It smells so good! One day while I was out shopping with my sister we stopped in Lush and started sniffing all of the bath bombs. Picking up their products and smelling them in the store is totally acceptable and quite fun. The woman working at the time was very helpful. She asked what scents I liked and directed me towards the French Kiss Bubble Bar. It contains Lavender oil, Rosemary oil and Thyme oil. Then she performed a demonstration on how the bubble bar works. She plopped a small piece of a bubble bar into a pitcher and started to pour water into it. My sister and I watched as the water began to bubble up. Then she poured the bubble-y water back and forth between two pitchers and the bubbles became fairly thick and soapy, just as a regular bubble bath solution would. This demonstration was supposed to mimic the act of filling up your bath tub with a piece of the bubble bar in it. I took it home and tried it out and it worked so well. I also have jets in my bathtub so when the bubbles popped I just ran the jets and it stirred it back up into bubbles again! I used about 1/4 of the bar for one bath and it was plenty. I love this product and would recommend it to anyone who wants to take bubble baths in an environmentally friendly way.

Environmental Enlightenment #9 (Natural Deodorant)

I realized after I wrote my last blog that someone out there may be asking themselves why I didn't mention grocery shopping at Whole Foods. I have a confession, I've only been inside of a Whole Foods once. That store is so huge and overwhelming (and I am pretty easily distracted). I ventured into Whole Foods with a purpose, to purchase a Diva Cup, which I will write about in a future blog in as lady-like a way as possible. But of course I got distracted and ending up buying a natural deodorant also. I had been looking for a good natural deodorant for a while. Burt's Bees makes a spray natural deodorant, but I couldn't find it in stores anywhere and I couldn't bring myself to have it shipped. I tried Lush's solid bar natural deodorant, which smelled fantastic and worked well, but it wasn't very easy to apply. It was powdery and broke into chunks. So when I found myself at Whole Foods in the Personal Hygiene aisle, I took a sideways glance towards the natural deodorants and came across this little guy...