6 Strategies for Choosing Non-toxic Personal Care Products

This past week concerned customers have been taking letters to Walgreen asking them to #MindtheStore by keeping products containing any of a list of 100 hazardous ingredients off their shelves. Similar previous efforts have resulted in Target and Walmart agreeing to take steps to reduce and eliminate hazardous chemicals in their products. Some might wonder whether this course of action is really necessary. I mean, don't our national laws and regulations prevent retailers from selling hazardous products in the first place?

Acceptable Levels of Risk

Although most consumers believe the U.S. government regulates the safety of personal care products, the sad truth is, personal products (a.k.a. cosmetics) are among the least-regulated products on the market. The current cosmetics law in the United States dates back to 1938, long before thousands of ingredients had even been invented. The FDA (charged with oversight of the cosmetics industry) has no authority to require pre-market safety testing, does not have the authority to regulate what goes into cosmetics before they are marketed for consumer use, and has no authority to require recalls of harmful cosmetics or even to require that manufacturers report cosmetics-related injuries to the FDA (source).

In fact, the cosmetics industry rather than a government agency is in charge of policing itself. Like many other industries before them (tobacco, alcohol, and now food), when faced with the possibility of meaningful government regulation (in 1978), the cosmetics industry volunteered to regulate itself by creating the Cosmetic Ingredient Review (CIR) Panel. Who determines if ingredients are safe enough to be used in personal products?

"Acceptable levels of risk are entirely at the [Industry] Panel's discretion" (source).

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Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Snack Bars

Here is another recipe that has made it into our homemade snack rotation. They started with the very popular recipe Playgroup Granola Bars on allrecipes.com. My friend Lys made them for me and my kids during a play date and they were a big hit. As always, I have made many modifications. I use chocolate chips instead of raisins, which was actually Lys' innovation. Of course, if I had used only raisins I could have called my recipe "refined sugar-free" or something. But oh well. Chocolate chips make them extra appealing.

I use white whole wheat flour (instead of white flour plus wheat germ). You could probably use whole wheat flour plus wheat germ, but I don't happen to stock wheat germ. I cut the brown sugar entirely, because they really are plenty sweet with just the honey. I also tried substituting applesauce for some of the oil and that works too. I make them both ways depending on whether I have an open jar of applesauce on hand or not. I also added some nuts. As with all my favorite healthy homemade snacks, these freeze extremely well and are perfect for lunch boxes, picnics, and on-the-go snacking.

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How to Turn Cereal Boxes into a Lift-the-Flap Toy

Breakfast is my favorite meal and I make hot breakfasts several times a week. Still, we manage to go through quite a bit of boxed cereal at my house. Enough to make me want to do something useful with the cereal boxes before they hit the recycling bin. When I noticed by chance that the boxes of several of our favorite cereals perfectly nested inside each other, I just knew there must be something they would be useful for. Eventually, I came up with the perfect upcycling project, thanks to my middle child's love of lift-the-flap books (which she calls "peek-a-boo books").

Here's how to turn two ordinary cereal boxes into a fun crafty project that your kids will love making and playing with. We call them peek-a-boo houses at my house.

How to Upcycle Cereal Boxes into a Peek-a-Boo (Lift-the-Flap) House

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6 Ways to Ditch Disposables

Over the last few years, one of the strategies I have used to green my lifestyle is to switch from single-use disposable products to reusable ones. In addition to trimming my trash's waistline significantly, these changes have reduced my family's exposure to toxins and saved me buckets of money. Here are 6 switches I've made that you can make too!

Goodbye, Paper Napkins and Towels. 

I still keep a roll of paper towels on an upper shelf in a kitchen cabinet, but probably only go through two or three rolls in a year. Switching to cloth napkins and towels was not nearly as painful as I thought it would be. First, we switched to cloth napkins. When we ran out of paper napkins, I simply dug the cloth napkins (wedding gift) out of a bin in the garage instead of buying more paper ones. Then I stocked up on some fabulous sponges and plenty of kitchen towels, and made sure to stash them in convenient locations. You can read more about my switch to a paperless kitchen here.

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How to Be an Environmentalist without Being a Total Downer

Why don't more people care about the environment?
Why aren't more people anxiously engaged in addressing climate change?
Why are so many good smart people seemingly indifferent to the looming catastrophes?

We greenies muse about these questions now and then. And sometimes thinking about the apathy of others gets us really discouraged and stuck in a feeling of hopelessness (what's the use?). Green Bean shared with me an interesting article that explains that the green movement has a major PR problem, and that the solution is to never say "earth" or "planet" or "environment," to focus on people (not polar bears), to enlist celebrities, and to repeat, repeat, repeat.

Recently I've been reading Daniel Goleman's book Focus about the nature of attention, and his discussion of attention has an enlightening explanation about why are paralyzed by climate change. He gives two very compelling reasons why we are very ill-equipped to address "our slow-motion mass suicide as human systems degrade the global systems that support life on this planet."

Continue reading at The Green Phone Booth

Would you like more ideas and tips about Going Green Gradually? Sign up for my free email subscription to get each of my posts delivered to your inbox (I usually post one or two times a week). You can also follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, Pinterest, Twitter, or with your favorite RSS Reader. I hope to see you again soon!

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Why I Don't Use Tampons Anymore

I had no intention of ever writing about this. Menstruation isn't my favorite topic, and I am a rather private person. Even after I became one of those weirdly enthusiastic menstrual cup users, I still wasn't planning to publish a post about alternatives to conventional feminine products. It was when I read the troubling report Chem Fatale by Women's Voices for the Earth about the potential health effects of toxic chemicals in feminine care products that I decided I would write a post about my experience switching to eco-friendlier menstrual products. As the report points out, "products intended for use on or in an incredibly absorbent part of a woman's body are marketed and sold with little to no data assuring the ingredients they contain are safe." That's in part because tampons and pads are considered medical devices by the FDA, and "medical devices lack any government requirement to disclose ingredients to the consumer."

Unfortunately, according to the report Chem Fatale, studies have shown that many chemicals of concern can be present in tampons and pads.

Hazardous chemicals in tampons may include:

• dioxins (from bleaching)
• furans (from bleaching)
• pesticide residues (from conventional cotton)
• unknown fragrance chemicals

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Easy-peasy DIY Trail Mix

A few months ago, my husband returned from a business trip with a  partially eaten bag of trail mix purchased in the airport. It was probably the healthiest option available in the airport convenience store. Snacking on the store-bought mix had given my husband a new appreciation for trail mix, and he told me he planned to stock up on bags of trail mix at the grocery store to keep with him at work for healthy snacking.

That I simply could not stomach. Making trail mix is far too easy to spend your money on the version at the grocery store. Plus the airport version included fake M&Ms and hydrogenated vegetable oil. Yuck. Even the mixes at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods often have added sugar and other unnecessary ingredients. I quickly whipped up a version using ingredients I already had on hand. If you make granola, or regularly purchase nuts and dried fruit, you already have everything you need to make your own trail mix.

DIY Trail Mix

2 parts nuts
1 part dried fruit
1 part chocolate chips

Measure and mix. Store in an air-tight container (I like to use a glass quart canning jar). Lasts for several weeks. 

Why should you bother making your own trail mix?

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Two Things to Do Before You Spring Clean

Get Rid of Stuff

Before spring cleaning is the perfect time to ruthlessly eliminate clutter, since deep cleaning often involves moving lots of stuff around. And by clutter I mean stuff you own that you don't use, don't need, and maybe don't even want. I've seen a lot of spring cleaning checklists that include tossing clutter while cleaning out this or that. This would never work for me. If I were taking everything out of a drawer to wipe it out, and I stopped to consider whether I should keep or get rid of each item, I would never finish cleaning anything. Take the week before beginning spring cleaning to purge the contents of one room each day and get rid of as much as you can before you ever spray a cleaner or wipe down a surface.

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100% Whole Grain Muffins with Applesauce

In my endless quest to amass a repertoire of healthy kid-friendly portable snacks, I stumbled upon this Healthy Applesauce Oat Muffin recipe on Mel's Kitchen Cafe. These muffins have turned into a huge hit at my house. They are perfect for a little breakfast snack or sweet snack any time of day. I now make the quadruple recipe because I am all about baking and freezing in bulk. Since they are whole grain they freeze and defrost very nicely.

I have modified the original recipe quite a bit. The first time I made it, I followed the recipe. They came out much too wet (little puddles under the cupcake liners) and excessively sweet, although still entirely edible. I imagine that what kind of applesauce you use, and how thick (versus watery) it is will affect how much applesauce it is appropriate to use. I use Trader Joe's organic unsweetened applesauce and found that decreasing it by a quarter worked well. I also cut the sugar by half (still plenty sweet!) and found that I could decrease the fat by a quarter. I also tend to be generous with the cinnamon and vanilla, with no ill effects. In addition, I let the batter sit for a bit after mixing to make sure the whole grains have plenty of time to absorb the liquid. I'm not sure this is strictly necessary, but I find this to be a good policy in general when dealing with whole grains (I do this with my whole grain pancakes).

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How to Eat Less Meat

For the sake of the health of the planet and our family (not to mention the pocketbook), we are always looking for ways to lower our meat consumption. Here are some methods that have worked for my family.

Use meat as a seasoning rather than a main dish.

I could eat vegetarian (vegan would be much tougher) if I really wanted to. I could do it. But the truth is, I like a little meat. One of my favorite ways to enjoy the taste of meat while consuming less of it is to use meat as a seasoning rather than the main attraction of a meal. A perfect example is my delicious hearty lentil soup. This filling soup is mostly lentils and vegetables, but the few ounces of bacon plus chicken broth make this a very flavorful and hearty soup.

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