April Showers

So, it’s Earth Day! Let’s get all eco-friendly. I am not any kind of a crunchy granola hippie, but I try to do what I can. We all should. I use a Brita and a SodaStream instead of buying plastic bottles of flat and seltzer water. I bring my own bags when I go to the store. I recycle. I live in an apartment, and take public transportation or walk almost exclusively. I support local and organic farming when I can. I use cloth napkins, cloth lunch bags, and special reusable sandwich wrappers. I buy mostly natural cleaning products. I even buy toilet paper and paper towels made from recycled paper. But not the tissues, those tissues are awful! I also have a weakness for real light bulbs. I only have three CFLs in my whole apartment, and I hate one of them every time. And they’re so efficient it’s going to take FOREVER for that one to burn out! So I deal with that, but in general, I think my carbon footprint is small enough that I don’t really feel guilty about having soft tissues and nice lighting.

Shave-a-colada

Sometime last year, I decided to try to reduce the amount of pthalates and parabens in my life. While it’s impossible to cut out all of your exposure— that stuff is in EVERYTHING— you’ve got to try to do what you can. At least, I do. One of the products I switched was my shaving cream. What is generally referred to as “shaving cream” is really a foam, and even the shaving gels are just a quick rub away from being foam. My shaving cream replacement is an actual cream, similar to body lotion, but less oily so it doesn’t jam up your razor. It seems like these are referred to as "Cream Shave" I guess to differentiate them from the creams that are actually foams. Inexplicably, these cream shaves are offered in an array of tropical flavors we would normally encounter in umbrella-drinks.